Facing double PU penalty, Russell will run old-spec Mercedes in Singapore

George Russell says he will run the old specification of Mercedes components at the Singapore Grand Prix to understand the team’s latest upgrade, as he faces a double power unit penalty.

Mercedes introduced an update to its car in Malaysia but did not get the step forward it expected in terms of performance, with Max Verstappen taking pole position and winning relatively comfortably. Russell will take a new power unit in Singapore as a result of a failure that forced his retirement on Sunday, and says that made it more simple for him to be the driver to run the older aerodynamic parts at the same time.

“I think for any team it’s always very important [to understand]; however, there’s no signs telling us the upgrade was not working,” Russell said. “And we know the car we had in Baku was the same car as we had in Budapest and Zandvoort, and in Baku we were on pole by eight tenths and in Budapest we were four tenths off the pace.

“So those fluctuations even with a consistent car and your rivals with the same car are drastic, you have a plus or minus one second delta that it can be. So we're pretty confident it’s a Malaysia-specific [result], when you look at the pace of Red Bull as well they clearly overperformed compared to where they’ve been this season compared to all of the other teams.

“And actually when you look at our pace compared to McLaren and Ferrari it wasn’t too dissimilar; it wasn't massively out of step. So this engine penalty this weekend has just given them a good opportunity to roll back – it’s the car that I won in Baku with.”

Since mid-season it has been clear Russell would need to take a power unit penalty at some stage, but he insists the Malaysia issue could not have been avoided. That now leaves the Briton facing two races where he will take a new power unit, as Mercedes will introduce an updated specification at a future round this season.

“No, the engine wasn’t stretched too long – it was the sixth race of the engine and obviously you have four engines a year, six races per engine when you split it up,” Russell said. “We actually put that engine in on Sunday in Budapest so it was the sixth race but minus qualifying and practice sessions of Budapest.

“We were waiting to take the engine penalty with the ADUO update but obviously unfortunately we’ve had to take it here. With seven races remaining, that's longer than the engines are designed for unfortunately, so it means I'll be taking another penalty at some point between the next race and the end of the season.

“So it feels a little bit one thing after another right now but that’s just how the cookie crumbles.”