Mercedes F1 team makes worrying admission over serious issue hurting George Russell

The Mercedes Formula 1 team admits it is “still struggling to understand” the confusing energy deployment issues that continue to blight George Russell. 

Russell has been left perplexed by a lack of energy deployment and straight-line speed deficit to his Mercedes team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli at power-sensitive circuits. 

The problem was exacerbated at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and during last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, where Russell lagged 0.508 seconds adrift of pole sitter Antonelli in qualifying. 

Russell suffered another huge blow to his title hopes after being tipped into a race-ending spin into the gravel after first-lap contact with former Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton at Spa. The devastating retirement, coupled with a sixth win for Antonelli in 10 races, has seen the Italian teenager pull 50 points clear of Russell.

But more worrying for the 28-year-old Briton is his mystifying deployment problems that are seriously impacting his performances and leaving him down on top speed compared to Antonelli. 

"We've had some problems with the deployment on George's car that we really need to understand and bottom out going to the next event,” Mercedes’ deputy technical director Simone Resta said after Spa. "All that started in Silverstone, where we started to see some deployment differences between our two cars.

"We've been doing a lot of analysis, and we came to the conclusion that one of the major contributors was related to a difference in driving style between the two cars. George studied that quite a lot and was able to change it and adapt going into Spa, but still, we can still see some difference in the deployment between these two cars.

"We are working with a brand-new set of regulations, we are just at the 10th race over these regulations, and we are still struggling to understand every single contributor. 

“We are not the only ones in this condition because we can see that many teams are still learning and adapting to this new regulation, so we'll do our best to really find out what's the main reason for this difference and to be best prepared for Hungary.”

Resta also shed more light on the deployment issues that team principal Toto Wolff revealed affected all Mercedes-powered cars on the opening lap in Sunday’s race. 

"Essentially we've been having a software issue with both our cars, which basically meant that we hit the harvesting limit at Turn 1," Resta explained. 

"Basically, we had a boost issue on both cars from Turn 1 to Turn 5. This has affected both George and Kimi and we've seen both of them losing ground after a good start."