George Russell pushed for "no-brainer" divided Mercedes F1 car strategy

George Russell has revealed he initially suggested that Mercedes should run a back-to-back comparison between its old and latest Formula 1 specifications to test whether its new upgrade works. 

Mercedes deployed its first major car upgrade to the W17 since the end of May at last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, but the team did not find the competitive gains it expected. 

After a difficult weekend at Sepang, Mercedes confirmed it would run a drastic split-specification comparison test in Singapore, with Russell running the older-spec aero package, and Andrea Kimi Antonelli using the latest version. 

According to Russell, who will start from towards the back of the grid due to an engine penalty after suffering a heartbreaking late power unit failure in Malaysia, he first instigated the idea last weekend. 

"Actually I instigated the conversation prior to the race on Sunday,” Russell told reports in Singapore, as quoted by Motorsport.com. 

"When the failure happened it was kind of a no-brainer, because we were kind of 50-50 about it pre-race, and I was more in favour to do it, and that was even pre-race, whereas now it is a total no-brainer.

"There's no signs telling us the upgrade was not working, and we know the car we had in Baku was the same car as we had in Budapest and Zandvoort, and in Baku we were on pole by eight tenths, and in Budapest we were four tenths off the pace.

"Those fluctuations, even with a consistent car and your rivals with the same car, are drastic, you have a fluctuation of plus or minus one second, it can be that delta, so we're pretty confident it's a Malaysia specific.

"When you look at the pace of Red Bull as well, they clearly overperformed compared to where they've been this season, compared to all of the other teams. When you look at our pace compared to McLaren and Ferrari, it wasn't too dissimilar, it wasn't massively out of step.

"This engine penalty this weekend has given us a good opportunity to roll back, it's the car that I won in Baku with.”

Antonelli, who leads the championship by 84 points from Russell, believes the upgrade is an improvement but that any performance gains were masked by Sepang being an “outlier” track for Mercedes. 

"The numbers told us a different story in Sepang, but I think in Sepang, it was a bit of an outlier because the tarmac was just so rough. Actually, in some corners, we were missing tarmac,” the 20-year-old Italian said. 

"Also, it was so hot; at times we had 60-plus degrees track temperature. So I think it was a bit of an outlier and definitely I feel like this weekend is going to be a bit more representative.

"You know, cooler temperatures, the tarmac is in a much better state. And I think it's going to be a very good test because in Sepang, we struggled a lot in low speed and here we have a lot of low speed. So let's see how it's going to be.

"We'll have two different cars on two different packages. So that is going to be interesting to see how we're going to have a straight comparison on that side.

"I think there's an actual improvement [with the new package], it's just we didn't quite see it in Sepang. That's why it was such an outlier.

"Hopefully this weekend, we'll be able to understand it more and to put the car in a better place and be able to use its full potential."