Mercedes still does not know the reason for Russell’s withdrawal in Melbourne
As a result of his first retirement due to reliability issues since joining Mercedes, George Russell did not cross the finish line of a Grand Prix for the first time since last season's race in Silverstone.
He could have been the hero of the last Australian Grand Prix. Starting from second place on the grid, George Russell made a lightning start and immediately took control of the race with an overtake on Max Verstappen at the first corner. Quickly followed by his teammate Lewis Hamilton, the younger of the two Britons could hope for a magnificent result in kangaroo country.
Unfortunately, after only seven laps of the race, fate struck hard for the driver of the Mercedes number 63. Called back to the pit by his team after the safety car deployment, Russell came out in seventh place before the race direction finally decided to wave a red flag. Stuck in the pack, the winner of the last Brazilian Grand Prix knew at that moment that his chances of victory had greatly diminished.
Ten laps later, as she was about to start a new lap of the Albert Park circuit, the black Mercedes saw flames coming out of its exhaust, causing the retirement of the King’s Lynn native. This was Russell’s first retirement due to reliability issues since the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2021, when he was racing for Williams. His last retirement dates back to the previous season’s British Grand Prix, during which his car got caught in the pile-up, causing Guanyu Zhou’s Alfa Romeo to roll over.
According to the German journal Auto Motor und Sport, the engine teams at Mercedes based in Brixworth, England, are still searching for the causes of this retirement. For the past week, engineers have been trying to identify why this power unit went up in smoke, even though the reliability of the German engine was its main strength last season.
Because reliability issues have been piling up since the beginning of the season. From the very first Grand Prix in Bahrain, several engine components of Lando Norris’s McLaren, equipped with a Mercedes power unit, were damaged, including the turbo, the combustion engine, and the energy recovery systems. Two weeks later in Saudi Arabia, it was the other Mercedes customer team facing issues. Lance Stroll was forced to stop his Aston Martin at the side of the track due to a problem with the MGU-H (exhaust gas energy recovery system). That makes it three engine issues in three races for the German power units.
