Racing
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George Russell’s Hungarian Grand Prix unraveled before the lights went out, as a Mercedes start-system failure dropped him from sixth on the grid to the back of the field and left him 59 points behind team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the championship despite a recovery to seventh.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the problem was not Russell’s fault. Explaining the start failure after the race, Wolff told media including RacingNews365 that Russell gave “about 10% throttle,” the engine “revved to the maximum,” and when he came off the throttle “it bogged down.” Wolff added: “I am really not happy about the mistakes that are happening.”
Russell said the issue had already started moments before launch. Speaking after the race, he said: “I was on the throttle holding the revs and then all of a sudden, about four seconds before the lights went out, the engine just started revving all over the place.” He added: “I was reacting with my throttle, and it was doing nothing. So, the engine wasn't reacting to the throttle.”
That turned what had looked like a chance to fight near the front into another damage-limitation race. Russell drove back through the field to take seventh and six points, a performance Wolff said recovered “the maximum points that he could have recovered.” But Antonelli’s third place meant the gap between the Mercedes drivers widened again heading into the summer break.
The bigger problem for Russell is that Hungary was not an isolated setback. It followed an engine-failure retirement in Canada and straight-line speed issues in Britain and Belgium, adding to a run of technical trouble that has repeatedly hurt his season. Russell made clear that pattern is now shaping how he views these weekends.
“I’m sort of past the point of disappointment now,” Russell said. “If I'm continuing to be disappointed with everything that goes on, I'll just be disappointed every day of the week.” He called Hungary “another sort of technical issue that completely ruined the race,” even if he took encouragement from what he described as “very strong” race pace.
Russell said Mercedes also has to examine whether anything on its side is contributing to the repeated errors. He said the team was “as pissed off as I am with how it's unfolded” and added: “We need to look at ourselves and ensure there's nothing we're doing wrong that is contributing to these errors.”
For a driver already dealing with a season he said was unlike anything he has experienced in his career, the latest failure did more than spoil one race. It sent him into the summer break having lost further ground in the title fight, with Antonelli’s podium stretching Russell’s deficit to 59 points.