Mercedes will deploy a software fix at the Hungarian Grand Prix aimed at curing the deployment issues that hampered George Russell's car at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Russell struggled with a straight-line speed disadvantage compared to Mercedes teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli throughout the Spa weekend, qualifying more than half a second behind the Italian rookie. His race ended on the first lap after a collision with Lewis Hamilton at Les Combes.
The team traced the problem to a software calibration issue rather than a hardware fault. Russell told reporters in Budapest on Thursday that the team is "pretty confident" the fix is ready.
"It was numbers on a screen that were not quite calibrated properly. So it's not like the hardware is wrong or there's a problem with the hardware," Russell said.
The 28-year-old Briton admitted the issue forced him to change his driving style at Silverstone and Spa, altering throttle and gear usage to compensate for what he thought was a power unit problem. That effort turned out to be unnecessary.
"It's a huge load off my mind," Russell said. "So I'm looking forward now, just going into a weekend where I can just try and focus on driving fast."
Russell also addressed his radio outburst after the first-lap collision in Belgium. "When you've just been punted out of the race and you're sat in the gravel trap on lap one, your emotions are pretty high."
Sources
- https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1101567/1/mercedes-has-fix-george-russells-f1-power-unit-software-glitch
