George Russell will have to wait until the Italian Grand Prix to find out whether Mercedes have truly identified the cause of the anomalies that hampered him between Silverstone and Spa, as the team identified the cause of his powertrain problem in its software.
The Brit repeatedly complained about a lack of power on the straights, a feeling that was also confirmed by telemetry comparisons with teammate Kimi Antonelli’s car. The team’s initial investigations quickly ruled out both a loss of engine power and a deficit in top speed.
From the start, the situation seemed anything but easy. In the first sector at Spa – the entire stretch from La Source to the braking zone for Les Combes – Russell’s sector times matched Antonelli’s, which would not be consistent with a simple performance deficit.
It was only after qualifying that the team was able to narrow down the search and identify the software as the likely cause of the anomaly. However, Russell’s race, which ended just a few corners after the start, provided no opportunity to test the accuracy of this hypothesis.
According to Motorsport.com, the cause lay deep in the code of the power unit management software. It was a subtle anomaly that required several days of analysis before engineers fully understood it. Essentially, the software used electrical power too early and used excessive amounts in the first part of the round.
The result was an imbalance in the distribution of energy: what was gained at the beginning of the lap inevitably had to be paid back in the later sectors when the driver expected to still have electrical energy available. This was most evident in the final sector of Spa.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: John Thys / AFP via Getty Images
A software fix has already been made at the Mercedes engine plant in Brixworth, but it still needs to be validated on the track. Some in the team believe a less significant part of the problem may also be related to Russell’s driving style, which may have magnified the impact of the software anomaly.
As McLaren team boss Andrea Stella recently explained, the current Mercedes units have adaptive logic that gradually learns a driver’s habits and adapts energy management to his driving style. If there was a software error, this learning process could have reinforced the undesirable behavior.
Nevertheless, Mercedes assumes that it has identified the main cause of the problem and does not need to replace the engine.
However, the team will only receive confirmation of the fix at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, as neither the Hungaroring nor the subsequent race at Zandvoort offer similar conditions to Silverstone and Spa to be able to properly evaluate the system under the circumstances that revealed the problem.
There is a positive for Russell, at least in the short term: at the Hungaroring, straight-line performance has a much smaller impact on overall performance, allowing him to approach the weekend without the constant worry of being disadvantaged.
“Having that thought constantly in the back of your mind makes it difficult to focus solely on putting together the best round possible,” a source close to the team explained.
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https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mercedes-identifies-george-russells-f1-power-unit-software-issue/10841124/
