© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes’ Tackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin details the water system issue on George Russell‘s car, and explains why it forced the team to retire him from the British Grand Prix.
George Russell started the British Grand Prix from pole, but unfortunately on Lap 34 he was told to retire the car. He was running in P4 at the time.
Afterwards, Mercedes revealed the retirement was caused by a suspected water system issue.
Now the team’s Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin provides the details behind the issue, and reveals what forced their decision to retire the car.
“Unfortunately, we knew that we had an issue relatively early in the race, so we were tracking this from the first stint,” the Briton said.
“We didn’t know that it was going to be terminal, but it’s all linked to a leak that was in the water system that was causing the pressure to start to drift, and ultimately when we stopped the car, it was to protect the power unit.
“So we knew that we were never going to finish the race. What you don’t want to do is finish the race and destroy the power unit, then you’ll be looking at a penalty possibly later in the year.
“So it was preventative, but there was no way that we were going to get to the chequered flag.”
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Asked where the team thinks Russell would have finished if he had continued the race, Shovlin explained:
“With a race like that, with the changing conditions, it’s quite hard to say this is where we would have finished.
“If it had been a dry race start to finish, looking at how George got off the line, how he was able to build a gap, I think he would have had a pretty straightforward afternoon.
“But if you take the point where we actually decided to retire the car, we were on intermediates, George was in P4, he was closing in on Max, so that was looking good.
“And to get him on the podium, he would have probably had to overtake Max at that point realistically, because we called the stop lap correct with Lewis when we went to dry tyres. So I think earlier it might have been a bit too damp.
“So as I said, minimum of P4, but there would have been a shot at it [a podium] if he could have passed Max on track on the inter,” he concluded.
