Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has shared further information about the exact cause of George Russell’s sudden retirement from the Canadian Grand Prix, after the Briton’s car dramatically came to a halt while he was leading the race.
Russell – who had taken victory one day earlier in the Sprint – was at the front of the pack during the opening stages of Sunday’s event, though spent much of these laps engaged in a close battle with team mate Kimi Antonelli.
However, the fight was abruptly stopped when Russell slowed on Lap 30 and stopped on track, leaving the six-time race winner furious as he threw his headrest out of the car – an action he later apologised for – before walking away from the stricken machine.
Reflecting back on the race in a Mercedes debrief video, Allison conceded that while there were many positives for the squad to take from the event – which was won by Antonelli – the disappointment of Russell’s DNF overshadowed things.
“It was a big weekend for us – key because it was the weekend where we introduced our first major upgrade for the year, and we were looking for it to be strong,” he explained.
“It was, but a weekend that was otherwise extremely good from a performance point of view was marred by the disappointment we all feel for letting George down with the reliability of the car.”
Allison went on to share further details of what caused the power unit failure that led to Russell’s dramatic exit from the Grand Prix.
“It was an engine kill that was caused by a failure in the battery, which just suffered a catastrophic failure a third of the way into the race and brought George’s race to an end there,” he continued.
“We can see enough at the end of the race that the battery was fairly unhappy, some heat damage there, and we’ll have to figure out in the coming days and weeks exactly what caused that and put it right.”
The non-finish for Russell resulted in his deficit to Antonelli in the World Championship standings stretching out to 43 points.
