Mercedes confirms George Russell findings after Hungarian GP investigation

Mercedes has revealed George Russell had a loss of water pressure as Q3 came to a close, with the team stopping him on track as a precautionary measure.

The team will put a new power unit in his car as a result, but as the new unit will still be within the season’s allocation and the team is replacing damaged parts like-for-like, he will not take a grid penalty.

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Russell qualified seventh for the Hungarian Grand Prix, revealing after the session that water from his power unit had been spraying on his rear tyres and cooling the rubber during his lap, compromising his pace.

On top of that, he was one of the drivers whose final flying laps were affected by a brief yellow flag at the end of Q3, with Max Verstappen having spun at Turn 14.

Having investigated, Mercedes will change Russell’s power unit as a result.

“During George’s final lap in Q3, we detected a loss of water pressure on his car and instructed him to stop as a precaution once he had completed the lap,” Mercedes said in a statement.

“Following further inspection, we have elected to change his power unit ahead of tomorrow’s race, moving to his fourth unit of the season and thus within his season allocation.

“As the change is also being made to replace a damaged component with one of the same specification, George will incur no grid penalty.”

Russell had been hoping for a better qualifying session prior to this issue, with teammate Kimi Antonelli having qualified fourth before being promoted a place due to Lewis Hamilton’s three-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri.

He was able to shed more light on exactly what happened to his power unit from behind the wheel, as his qualifying session was somewhat compromised.

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He told PlanetF1.com and others: “We just had a water leak. Hit a bump at turn four, the lap was feeling good until then, and then suddenly the lap wasn’t.

“I didn’t think much of it, and the team told me the water was spraying over my tyres because we saw it in the data, suddenly my tyre temperatures got really cold on the rear.

“I don’t think much more [was possible], top three definitely not possible, but maybe a few positions higher would have been there.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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