– George Russell is not only struggling with the pace of his teammate Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes. The Silver Arrows are trying to find out why the third-placed driver in the Drivers’ World Championship is struggling with the W17’s battery deployment.
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Already in Silverstone, the former top favourite for the title lacked the necessary top speed compared to his teammate. Russell then decided to adapt his driving style a little for the Belgian Grand Prix. The 28-year-old wanted to get more out of the car, especially through his use of the accelerator pedal, but the problem on the Ardennes rollercoaster remained unsolved.
“My entire focus in the last 36 hours has been on straight-line speed,” Russell said after qualifying in Spa to our sister portal Motorsport.com. While Antonelli once again secured pole position, the more experienced of the two Mercedes drivers only qualified fourth.
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“I couldn’t focus on the set-up, the tyres or anything, because we’re just trying to solve [this problem]. Even on my last lap, we were missing one and a half tenths of a second on the straight alone.”
“You look at your steering wheel,” Russell said, “and you’re losing speed on the straight, even when you’re full on the throttle. You feel powerless. You don’t know what’s going on. Honestly, I don’t think it’s the power unit. But something is slowing us down on the straights.”
According to Simone Resta, Deputy Technical Director at Mercedes, he also emphasizes that the deployment problems with Russell have not yet been fully understood.
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“We have some deployment issues in George’s car that we really need to understand and resolve by the next event,” he said in Spa. “This all started in Silverstone when we began to see differences in the deployment of the two cars.”
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“We had analysed a lot and concluded that driving style was an important difference between the two cars. George investigated this intensively and was able to change and adapt [his driving style] for Spa. And yet we continue to see a difference between the two cars.”
Resta also emphasizes that under these rules, it’s not just the Silver Arrows struggling to understand every single aspect. This is supported, among other things, by the power unit problem that both Mercedes drivers had to contend with at the start of the race.
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Due to a software glitch, Antonelli and Russell had almost no energy after the first corner. Accordingly, Verstappen overtook the championship leader, while Russell had to defend against Lewis Hamilton in Les Combes. Due to the collision between the two former teammates, the 28-year-old had to end the Grand Prix prematurely in the gravel trap.
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