George Russell suffered from a ‘bug’ in the Mercedes engine during the Formula 1 Japanese GP. The strange problem cost the Briton a chance to effectively fight for the podium in Suzuka, finishing outside the top-3.
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The Briton’s race was quite frustrating where after losing positions at the start, he managed to recover and put himself in front. However, with the wrong pit-stop timing, before the safety car came out, he saw his race compromised and in the end, the system still presented a failure, caused by the driver himself, and made it impossible for him to be better than fourth place.
“If we had stopped George one lap later, he would have kept the lead for the restart. As it happened, he dropped to P3 and lost another position to Lewis when he hit the energy recovery limit too early in the lap and was left with insufficient battery for the restart,” explained Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ engineering director.
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“He then had another frustrating problem: a bug in the software code, triggered by pressing a button and a gear change simultaneously, caused the power unit to enter superclip mode and charge the battery, which allowed Charles to overtake him,” he continued.
In the end, the Japanese GP was just a frustrating afternoon for Russell in Formula 1. “Clearly, there is a lot we need to work on and understand in the coming weeks. We had a great start to the season, but our competitors are closing in. Fortunately, we have several areas to improve and we will make the most of the break in the calendar to develop the points where we are not strong enough,” he said.
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