George Russell will be starting the Las Vegas Grand Prix next weekend with a fresh power unit, but crucially he won’t have to take a five-place grid penalty for a component change as this is within his season allocation.
The Mercedes driver was forced to retire during the latter stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix last weekend as his W14 was struggling with engine cooling issues. This could have proved a terminal issue with that particular power unit already at the end of its life cycle.
Russell had stated his worries about facing an engine penalty for the trip to Las Vegas next weekend. The 25-year-old was on the back foot from the early stages of the season in terms of power unit allocations after his Mercedes started spitting flames at the Australian Grand Prix.
Mercedes’ head of trackside performance Riccardo Musconi has, however, provided a reassuring update on the situation. “The power unit used in Interlagos was meant to be its last weekend,” he explained in a video address to fans.
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“To avoid a possible fire and damage to other parts of the car, the logical conclusion was to retire the car. He will be on a different power unit for the final two races so there is no issue from that point of view.”
While Russell may be free of engine penalties for the Las Vegas GP, there are still plenty of things to worry about in the Mercedes camp. The legendary constructor were extremely disappointing in their performance at Interlagos with Lewis Hamilton taking the chequered flag down in P8 and his team-mate running on the fringes of the top ten prior to his retirement.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the disaster in Sao Paulo, Russell explained: “Clearly we got something wrong this weekend. Still, we’re not too sure what that is as yet, but the pace just hadn’t been there.
“We thought yesterday may have been a one-off, but clearly, it wasn’t, so we need to regroup and try to understand it. 12 months ago this was our strongest race of the year, 12 months later it’s by far our weakest race of the year, so very strange.
“The car was just slow this weekend. The tyres were sliding around and I think what we were doing was the maximum. Something doesn’t quite add up, you just don’t suddenly lose a second’s worth of performance and go from a podium-fighting car to just fighting for points.”
