George Russell labels Belgian GP ‘worst performance of the season’ in Mercedes demand

George Russell called his fifth in Belgium “the worst performance of the season” and said Mercedes “need to understand” why the car has lost so much performance.

After a good start to the year that climaxed with a win in Canada, Russell’s last three results read fifth, 10th, fifth with the W16 falling down the pecking order.

George Russell says Mercedes need ‘sit down’ to reverse form

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

While previous problems could be blamed on extreme heat, the team’s struggles at the damp Spa were perhaps the most worrying sign of how far Mercedes has fallen away from the sport’s top runners.

Russell finished 34.863 seconds off winner Oscar Piastri and, even if McLaren is in a league of its own, 13 seconds separated the Briton from fourth-placed Max Verstappen.

After the race, which leaves him looking over his shoulder to Charles Leclerc for fourth in the Drivers’ Standings, Russell described it as “the worst performance of the season” and demanded the team discover why its performance had fallen off so much.

“Maximum in terms of the finishing result, very underwhelming in terms of the performance,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com. “We need to really understand what is going on and why we’ve taken such a step backwards, because these conditions today, you would argue, are ideal for us in our car, and once again, it’s been the worst performance of the season.

“So we’re going to have a big sit-down this week and try to figure it out.”

As for his suspicions, Russell pointed towards a front wing change the team made in Barcelona.

“I think obviously we had the change with the front wing in Barcelona. We then went in a slightly different direction afterwards to sort of tackle the issue of the change of front wing and clearly since that point, we’ve taken a big step backwards.

“So it could be as simple as just reverting back to something that we had earlier in the season. Of course, you can’t do that with the front wing, but in terms of the rest of the setup…

“But I don’t know, it seems quite strange how we’ve gone so far backwards.

More reaction from the Belgian GP

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“The car isn’t feeling as nice to drive at the moment as it once did, lacking rear stability, whereas at the start of the year it was much better. I think Kimi [Antonelli] and I are collectively making more mistakes because the car is more challenging to drive.”

Away from his own race, Russell was asked about the race director’s decision to delay the race for over an hour and while fans were angered, Russell said racing in those conditions is like doing so with a blindfold on.

“As a racer, you always want to get going, you love driving in the rain, but the fact is, when you’re doing over 200 miles an hour out of Eau Rouge, you literally can’t see anything. You may as well have a blindfold on. It isn’t racing, it’s just stupidity.

“So I think, considering it was clearly going to be dry from four o’clock onwards, I think they made the right call.”

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