(Motorsport-Total.com) – Are George Russell’s problems now a thing of the past? The Englishman was no longer able to keep up with Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli in recent races, but was held back by his car, as his team found out after the race in Spa.
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“We found a bug in our software and had to react to it,” confirms Simone Resta, the deputy technical director. “There was something already in Silverstone, but the problem was more obvious in Spa, which is one of the tracks with the highest lap time loss per unit of power.”
That should actually explain Russell’s gap to the season’s rising star, but Resta also says that the problem did not only affect Russell’s car – but also Antonelli’s car: “The software is the same on all cars, and the problem was present in every car,” he emphasizes, but adds: “It affected George more than Kimi.”
That Russell is currently behind his teammate’s performance also has other reasons: “We also have to consider that Kimi was running with a fresher power unit in the comparison of their performance in the last few races, which is of course always somewhat better than a rather worn one,” says Resta.
But that should change when a fresh power unit is also installed in Russell’s car.
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“So it’s a bit of everything: part software, but also that Kimi’s engine program ran offset in time compared to George’s,” says Resta. “You add everything up when you look at the final result.”
The software problem was also discovered by Mercedes because Russell put pressure on the team. He could not explain the differences between himself and his teammate, which is why he demanded investigations from his team that now led to this problem.
“As a team, we are really grateful to George for challenging us and drawing our attention to an area we needed to focus on,” says Resta. “He was really good at understanding things and pointing them out to us. We were ultimately able to identify the solution and make a correction for this race.”
“Of course, he is very happy that we got to the bottom of it and were able to fix it. It was good teamwork. It was not exactly the easiest task. As I said, with the new regulations there are still many things to learn. But it is a step forward.”
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