Mercedes is deciding when George Russell will take an engine change penalty across the remainder of the 2026 Formula 1 season, with the team bracing for him to follow what Kimi Antonelli will face at the Italian Grand Prix.
The F1 world championship leader is poised to serve a back-of-the-grid penalty for a full power unit change at his home round at Monza due to unreliability earlier this season, which has seen the Italian go through his permitted allocation of engine parts. Antonelli retired from the Barcelona GP in June due to a terminal power unit failure.
F1 teams typically target specific races for power unit changes and subsequent grid penalties, when possible, with Monza a favoured venue because of the track characteristics making it easier to overtake at.
This is why Antonelli will serve his grid penalty at his home round; with his allocation already depleted and needing a new power unit, Mercedes is confident it can minimise the pain of the grid drop.
“We've regretted doing it in Monza previously because the degradation has been relatively low in recent years,” Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director, said on the team’s Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show. “The cars had low drag, so they weren't actually great for towing because they don't sort of punch a particularly big hole in that configuration. And also the DRS effect was very small.
“That was in the past. Now you've got a real energy-starved circuit and it becomes one where there are four overtaking zones. You definitely can't defend at all of them. And if you are a faster car, we expect it to be relatively straightforward to make progress.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
“But saying that, how do we decide where to take them? The main point is based on where do you need the hardware.
“We've lost some internal combustion engines at reasonably low mileage. So the biggest thing is a case of we need to take it by this point. And if that point is a race where you really don't want to be fighting from the back, we'll consider bringing it earlier.
“There's a bit of a sense that we've got a lead in both championships. Let's do the painful stuff while we have a lead in both championships. Not, if that gets closer at the end, we don't want to be adding, piling more and more pressure on ourselves.”
With Antonelli’s fate known, Mercedes has turned attention to Russell’s engine penalty dilemma. The team isn’t looking at both drivers serving penalties at Monza, if it can avoid it, so focus turns to the tracks immediately afterwards and where overtaking is considered easier.
“We've not yet quite nailed down where George will take his, but it's there for both of them because both of them have [suffered engine failures],” Bradley Lord, Mercedes deputy team principal, said.
“We saw the retirement for George in Canada, Kimi in Barcelona. And then George also had a stoppage in Hungary as well, right at the end of his qualifying lap there, it could have been a much more serious impact for us had that happened in the race.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Brett Farmer / LAT Images via Getty Images
“We've got some stuff to manage through in order to get to the end of the season on the freshest and most performant hardware possible. And it is always a trade-off between where are you getting into a risky zone on sort of high-life or high-mileage components.
“And what's the risk of not scoring points from that versus the penalty of taking the grid penalty and having that deficit and then coming back hopefully through the field at the events where you need to do it, and which one statistically is likely to give you the best point scorer at the end.”
Based on that assessment, Baku is likely to be a candidate for Russell’s grid penalty given the similar track characteristics to Monza. The brand-new Madrid circuit remains too much of an unknown, which means Russell would only need to get through two F1 rounds (Italy and Spain) before serving his grid penalty at the Azerbaijan GP at the end of September.
After that, there is a chance Mercedes could look at Sepang, which hosts the Bahrain GP in Malaysia, one week after the Baku round, given it is also a track that is likely to see a high number of overtaking opportunities.
But the other factor Mercedes is considering is how long it can delay the engine change and how much risk it can afford with added mileage and wear on Russell’s existing power unit parts.
“There is a sort of probability of failure [to consider],” Shovlin added. “It's never an absolutely known thing and that's evolving race on race.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Eric Le Galliot
“So with Mercedes and the customer teams, every race you put more miles on the power units, every race they're checked and trying to understand whether previous containments for faults have actually solved a problem.
“It could be that our optimism for taking a PU to the sixth or seventh race might be higher in a few races time than it is right now. Every race we're rejigging plans just based on what we've learned and where we may have gained a bit more confidence.”
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
- The Motorsport.com Team
Originally published by motorsport.com —
Read Original Article