George Russell: Double penalty following Mercedes engine failure? Bitter, bitter

The going is getting tougher for eight-time Grand Prix winner George Russell (Mercedes): he retired from the Bahrain Grand Prix and now trails championship leader Kimi Antonelli by 84 points. But with eight races remaining (seven Grands Prix, one Sprint), there are still 183 points up for grabs.

Naturally, the Briton was gutted after the engine failure at the Sepang International Circuit. And there’s more to come. It was all but inevitable that the 2022 and 2025 World Championship fourth-place finisher would need a new power unit sooner or later – and would therefore have to cope with a grid penalty – but now it’s a certainty.

Mercedes had actually intended to wait until the US Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas to fit Russell with the new power unit, as it is easier to make up ground there than on the narrow street circuit in Singapore.

But Bradley Lord, deputy team principal of the Mercedes F1 team, confirmed in Sepang: “We need to take a calm look at the damage and understand what this means for his engine allocation. But he has no more engines with low mileage left. That could well mean we have to deviate from our original plan.”

And it gets worse: Mercedes had planned to fit an upgraded engine into Russell’s car for the US Grand Prix. But if a fresh power unit has to be used as early as Singapore, it will be the old engine configuration, as the new one won’t be ready yet. Bradley Lord: “We still need to sort that out, but yes – it could hit George twice as hard. That would be really unfortunate for him.”

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