As Motorsport.com reports, George Russell is right back in the thick of a set-up nightmare with the newly updated Mercedes machine. Friday practice at the Mexico Grand Prix brought familiar headaches for the driver, who found his car marooned outside its optimum operational window.
The championship-leading squad first brought this updated W17 to the track in Malaysia this month. Max Verstappen easily brushed it aside there, and a similar story played out in Singapore. Kimi Antonelli did manage to break Verstappen's streak by taking pole and winning in Austin, but life on the other side of the garage has been far harsher. Russell has scraped together a DNF, a ninth place, and an eighth place across the last three rounds.
The balance. The through-corner balance isn’t where we want it and the car isn’t quite as together as we’d like it, so yeah it’s going to require a bit of work.
Russell points the finger squarely at the upgrades themselves, arguing they possess an alarmingly narrow operating window. Even after finishing third in FP2 and landing just a tenth behind Ferrari pacesetter Charles Leclerc, the Briton felt the familiar limitations rearing their head. “I think still not fully on top of the new package,” Russell noted after sitting out opening practice while Frederik Vesti took over his car. “We see there's some balance limitations we have that we're struggling to overcome. I would say currently for Kimi and I, we're probably more outside the window, similar to what we saw in Malaysia, than inside the window like Kimi achieved in Austin. But hopefully overnight we can get it back there.”
Leclerc topping both Friday sessions came as zero shock to the Mercedes camp. Russell pointed out that Ferrari arrived as the clear pre-weekend favourite, largely due to a distinct advantage over turbo lag in the bruising high altitude of Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. The venue demands absolute perfection from a turbo working overtime in thin air, and the SF-26 carries a notably smaller turbo than its competitors.
Still, turbo lag isn't the sole antagonist for the Silver Arrows this weekend. When pressed on the specific areas requiring urgent attention, Russell kept it simple: “The balance. The through-corner balance isn’t where we want it and the car isn’t quite as together as we’d like it, so yeah it’s going to require a bit of work.”
Thankfully, the garage is keeping calm for now. Leclerc also swept both Friday practice sessions at the United States Grand Prix before Antonelli completely turned the tables on race day. Deputy team principal Bradley Lord assessed the opening day with measured pragmatism. “Solid day for us, I'd say – not spectacular, but solid,” Lord stated. “There's a lot of challenges here with PU cooling, with brake cooling, with boost management with these turbos, now that we don't have an MGU-H to help us out with that as we have done for the last few years. So this is a tricky place to get everything right, to be quick on a single lap, but then also be able to maintain your pace for the long run. So we've answered a few of those questions. We've got a bit more digging to do through the data to find exactly the best compromise for tomorrow and Sunday.”
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