George Russell reveals track bump led to Monaco GP qualifying issue

George Russell has revealed that running over a bump caused his Mercedes F1 car to lose power in qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Russell’s car stopped in the Monaco tunnel during Q2, leaving him 14th on the grid for Sunday’s race.

After struggling in practice for pace, Russell looked to be back in the fight at the front.

However, Russell’s qualifying session ended prematurely after a bump at Turn 1 caused his engine to switch off.

Speaking after the session, where Crash.net are present in the paddock, Russell said: “Yeah it was the cause but it was a bump on the straight, a bump there all weekend.

“I’ve felt it all weekend, but for whatever reason this time the whole engine switched off when I hit this bump.

“Really disappointing because we got ourselves a bit lost this weekend with the set-up and went back to basics for quali and from Lap 1 I felt back in the game and you know also Kimi stayed with probably the set-up he had in FP3, I went back to something we knew, he was struggling and we were there, and I feel we would have been in the top four, and now we’re not.”

It capped off a woeful session for Mercedes after Kimi Antonelli crashed at the end of Q1, leaving him set to start the race from 15th.

Russell predicts “crazy strategies” in Monaco

For the first time in the history of the Monaco GP, all 20 drivers must complete two pit stops during the 78-lap race.

Due to this new rule, some teams are expected to stop at the end of the first lap to move one of their pit stops out of the way.

Russell expects some “crazy strategies” to be deployed.

“For sure there’s going to be some crazy strategies, but we qualified 14th, probably should have been top five,” he added.

“So there’s 10 cars between me and where we should have been and people are doing crazy things with the strategy, half will go one way and half will go the other way, therefore whichever one we decide we’re still stuck behind five drivers.

“That’s the problem that people will pit early for clean air but if everyone does it… You’re going to see one of two things,people pitting on lap one, or going really long into the race, so, we do have a small advantage with the two hard tyres, but if we can’t pass there’s not much we can do.”