George Russell suffered a crash during post-season testing following the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The Mercedes star has endured a difficult year and his collision was the icing on the cake for the Brit as he waves goodbye to 2023 in underwhelming fashion.
After securing an eighth-place finish in the Drivers’ Championship over the weekend, Russell was given the opportunity to lay the foundations for a successful start to 2024 with a one-day Pirelli tyre test.
However, after taking to the Yas Marina Circuit for the morning session, Russell caused a red flag that saw Mercedes call off their final few hours on the track. The 25-year-old crashed into the barriers at turn six, with it since emerging that a component failure on his W14 was to blame for the incident.
Russell escaped uninjured from the crash, though his car sustained significant damage to its front right corner, returning to the garage without its front wing and there being signs of the impact with the barriers.
A Mercedes spokesperson told Crash.net that they will investigate the matter thoroughly ahead of the winter break, with the incident being caused by ‘some sort of failure’ that will need to be looked into.
Russell will be hoping that a period of rest will allow him to regather his thoughts and hit the ground running in 2024, having recently admitted that this season has been the worst of his career. He told Sky Sports: “There’s a reason every single race [for the issues], whether it’s me crashing into a wall [in Singapore] or the rain coming down in Zandvoort on the wrong lap or the engine breaking down in Melbourne.
“But when it happens once or twice, you can put it down to bad luck. When it happens on maybe nine, 10, 11 occasions throughout the year, it’s definitely not luck. Ultimately, the car isn’t quick enough. We need to keep on pushing. When the competition’s so high, one small mistake and you drop a number of places.”
Russell’s teammate Lewis Hamilton has recently spoken openly about the need for changes ahead of next season, and it remains to be seen how the Mercedes team react.
