George Russell was the one who 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 actually works, as Crash.net reports.
Mercedes brought its first major car upgrade to the W17 since the end of May to the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, but the team failed to find the competitive gains it expected. Following 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 reporters in Singapore. "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."
Russell pointed out that there are no signs telling them the upgrade was not working. They know the car they had in Baku was the same car as they had in Budapest and Zandvoort, and in Baku they were on pole by eight tenths, while in Budapest they were four tenths off the pace. Those fluctuations, even with a consistent car and rivals with the same car, are drastic with a delta of plus or minus one second, leaving them pretty confident that Malaysia was specific. When looking at the pace of Red Bull, they clearly overperformed compared to where they have been this season compared to all of the other teams, while Mercedes' pace compared to McLaren and Ferrari was not too dissimilar or massively out of step. Russell added that the engine penalty this weekend has given them a good opportunity to roll back, noting it is the car that he won in Baku with.
Meanwhile, Andrea Kimi 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 20-year-old Italian stated that the numbers told them a different story in Sepang, but the tarmac was just so rough that in some corners they were missing tarmac. It was also so hot, with track temperatures reaching 60-plus degrees at times.
Antonelli feels this weekend is going to be a bit more representative with cooler temperatures and tarmac in a much better state. It is going to be a very good test because they struggled a lot in low speed in Sepang and Singapore has a lot of low speed. With two different cars on two different packages, it is going to be interesting to see a straight comparison. Antonelli thinks there is an actual improvement with the new package, and they just did not quite see it in Sepang, which is why it was such an outlier. Hopefully this weekend they will be able to understand it more, put the car in a better place, and use its full potential.
