George Russell on DSQ alert as Qatar Grand Prix team radio emerges
Lando Norris and George Russell both made their F1 debuts in 2019
Mercedes driver George Russell was on disqualification alert in practice at the Qatar Grand Prix, commenting over team radio that he could smell wood out on track.
Plank wear is a hot topic ahead of the penultimate round of the F1 2025 season following the disqualification of both McLaren drivers at last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
George Russell on DSQ alert in FP1 at Qatar Grand Prix
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri originally finished second and fourth respectively in Nevada, but found themselves excluded due to excessive plank wear following a post-race investigation.
Russell and Mercedes teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli were promoted to second and third in Las Vegas as a result of McLaren’s double disqualification.
McLaren’s exclusion could prove to have significant ramifications on the title fight with Norris holding a 24-point lead over Piastri and Max Verstappen, the Red Bull driver and reigning four-time world champion, entering the Qatar Grand Prix.
George Russell vs Andrea Kimi Antonelli: Mercedes head-to-head scores for F1 2025
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
The McLaren drivers headed Friday’s FP1 session in Lusail with Piastri outpacing Norris by 0.058 seconds to claim top spot.
Russell, meanwhile, was 14th, exactly nine tenths off the pace.
With Qatar the final sprint event of the season, teams have just a single hour of practice to identify a workable setup ahead of sprint qualifying.
Under a rule change introduced last season, the parc ferme rules are relaxed between Saturday’s sprint race and the main qualifying session to allow teams to make further setup tweaks.
Russell appeared to hint that some cars were struggling with ride height in the early stages over the weekend in Qatar, commenting over team radio at one stage that he could smell wood from the cockpit of his W16.
Russell said: “I’m smelling a lot of wood.”
More on George Russell and Mercedes from PlanetF1.com
Russell’s comments come after Andrea Stella, the McLaren team principal, shed more light on the circumstances behind the team’s disqualification in Las Vegas.
Stella identified “extensive porpoising” as the “specific cause” behind McLaren’s issues in Nevada, ruling out a repeat by insisting the problem was “very specific” to the Las Vegas street circuit.
He said: “What happened in Vegas was due to an anomaly in the behaviour of the car, rather than it being the outcome of an excessive or unreasonable chase of performance.
“Our way of acting and thinking as a team, with a strong focus on performance, has brought us to where we are today, namely winning two consecutive constructors’ titles and having two drivers at the top of the championship with two races to go.
“We, as a team, constantly learn from experience and we calibrate our approach all the time and we will certainly use any information gained through the situation experienced in Vegas.”
He added: “The conditions we experienced last weekend and which led to the onset of porpoising and excess of grounding, compared to what was expected, are very specific to the operating window of the car in Vegas and the circuit characteristics.
“We have a well-established and consolidated way of setting up the car and we are confident that this will lead us to an optimal plan for the coming races, starting from the Lusail International Circuit.
“Nevertheless, we learn from every lesson and the one in Las Vegas has been able to provide some useful information about the operating window of the car and the porpoising regime.”
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