The qualifying session in China turned out to be a real rollercoaster for George Russell. The Mercedes driver suffered a failure in the front wing during Q2 and later found himself forced to stop briefly on the track during Q3. Despite winning the previous sprint race from pole, Russell felt much less assured during this complicated qualifying.
Mercedes is still investigating the origin of the problem that caused Russell’s car to enter anti-stop mode right after leaving the garage. The vehicle came to a halt on the circuit, and when it managed to restart, it got stuck in first gear. With little time available, the team had to resort to a common solution in technology: turning the car off and on again to reset various parameters.
After several attempts, the car was able to go into neutral and change gears normally. Russell left the garage with only two minutes to spare and managed to place his Mercedes in the second position on the grid, just 0.222 seconds behind the other driver from the team, Kimi Antonelli.
“It’s been a totally crazy session since the end of Q2,” Russell commented. “The front wing broke and the team wasn’t sure if that was the case. I was convinced it was, and that caused some tension with the wing change. When I went out on track, I felt something wasn’t right, I stopped, and the car wouldn’t restart. Then, when it worked again, I couldn’t change gears.”
The driver emphasized that he was very happy to qualify in a competitive position after the setbacks. “It was better than I expected, given that I started the lap with no battery and cold tyres,” Russell added. “My goal was to secure a time in qualifying and in the end, I felt lucky to start in P2, which was much better than I anticipated.”
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
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