Toto Wolff lifted the veil on the engine problems that hampered George Russell at Spa. Mercedes identified an already known anomaly… as well as a new failure that appeared during the race.
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The Belgian Grand Prix allowed Mercedes to better understand the difficulties encountered by George Russell. After a weekend marked by a lack of straight-line speed, Toto Wolff explained that two distinct problems had affected his driver.
The first concerned energy management throughout the lap, while the second appeared at the start of the race and affected all single-seaters equipped with the Mercedes engine.
An anomaly identified during qualifying
Throughout the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, Russell complained of a straight-line performance deficit.
Mercedes finally discovered the origin of part of the problem.
“During the weekend, we identified a problem with George’s engine which meant he had less energy to deploy approaching Turn 18.”
According to Wolff, this discovery is almost good news.
“It’s a good thing we detected it here, because in Budapest, where the circuit demands less energy recovery and deployment, it would have been much harder to spot.”
The Mercedes boss believes this anomaly explains a large part of the gap observed between Russell and Kimi Antonelli in qualifying.
“We believe this accounted for about half, or even a little more, of the gap separating him from Kimi.”
A new failure appeared during the race
The problem encountered at the start of the Grand Prix was, however, of a completely different nature.
Exiting the first corner, Russell suddenly lost power, allowing Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton to overtake him before the collision that ended his race.
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This time, all Mercedes-powered cars were affected.
“All Mercedes engines suffered from a lack of energy exiting the first corner. This was not a problem specific to George.”
Antonelli was also affected, although the consequences were less significant.
“It penalized him more than Kimi, but Kimi also encountered this problem. He thus dropped from third to fifth place.”
A completely unprecedented phenomenon
Wolff specifies that this loss of power at the start had no connection with the difficulties observed previously.
“It was a new problem.”
According to him, this anomaly could not have been anticipated.
“It’s something we wouldn’t have identified on the simulator, because we would have had to know precisely what to look for. It was truly a new problem.”
Finally, Wolff quantified the impact of the first anomaly on Russell’s performance.
“He had more energy at the start of the lap, but less at the end. In qualifying mode, we estimate that it cost him between two and two and a half tenths per lap, while the impact was much lower on long runs.”
Mercedes now hopes to have identified all these difficulties before the Hungarian Grand Prix, where the team will seek to prevent Russell from being penalized again by energy management problems.
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