George Russell penalty fate confirmed as sudden engine change needed | F1 | Sport
George Russell will need a new engine for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, his Mercedes team has confirmed. The Brit was able to complete qualifying but pulled over at turn one after taking the chequered flag at the end of his final flying lap, having been told to stop because of a problem on the car.
Mercedes had spotted in the data that there was a leak in the water system on board Russell‘s car and they told him to stop as quickly as possible in a bid to prevent further damage being done. However, once they got the car back to the garage, it is understood they found that the engine had cracked.
In a statement supplied to Express Sport, a Mercedes spokesperson confirmed that a change of engine is necessary but, because he still had another unused power unit left in his pool, the swap will not incur any grid penalty for Sunday’s Hungaroring race.
The statement read: “During George’s final lap in Q3, we detected a loss of water pressure on his car and instructed him to stop as a precaution once he had completed the lap. Following further inspection, we have elected to change his power unit ahead of tomorrow’s race, moving to his fourth unit of the season and thus within his season allocation. As the change is also being made to replace a damaged component with one of the same specification, George will incur no grid penalty.”
As referenced by the Mercedes spokesperson, drivers have an annual allocation of engine components for each season and Russell had one spare of every power unit part he needed replacing. Parc ferme was active as of the start of qualifying, but teams are permitted to replace broken or damaged parts as long as they are of the same specification.
That is the case here, as Russell needs new engine components because of a failure, and not because he is changing his setup or adding a more performant part deliberately. As a result, there is no penalty incurred and the Brit is free to start Sunday’s race seventh, where he qualified.
“I’m happy that we’re back on top and my laps were very good,” the McLaren driver said. “It’s certainly a track where you need confident and a good rhythm and feeling in the car, because you don’t have time to chill and relax on the straight and really think about things – it’s straight from one corner into another. I’ve always liked this track, I’ve always performed well here.
“But it’s not possible without a good car. You’re never going to be on pole without a quick car and I felt good with the car all weekend. We’ve certainly been able to maximise more and more the package and the upgrades that we’ve brought. It’s nice to see that it’s helped us to get a good result today, so lots of positives for the team and for me, because I felt very confident and like I could extract good pace from it when I wanted to.”
