Monaco GP is “over” for Mercedes after qualifying issue

Mercedes suffered a double qualifying blow at the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix that left George Russell writing off the rest of the weekend.

After Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s “unnecessary” crash – which brought out the red flag at the end of Q1 – left the Italian down in 15th place, Russell then followed suit, having been forced to park his stricken W16 in the tunnel.

Mercedes confirmed: “George lost power after hitting a bump coming out of Turn 1 and was unable to restart the car after trying a number of switch changes. It looks like a potential electrical problem at this stage,” with the Briton helping Monaco marshals remove his car to allow the session to resume.

It means he starts one place ahead of Antonelli in 14th but he is not confident of a strong showing on race day.

“Yeah, it was definitely the cause, but it was a bump in the straight,” Russell said, having complained on the radio about hitting that bump when he was struck by the technical issue.

“It’s a bump that’s been there all weekend and a bump that I’ve felt all weekend, but for whatever reason, on this occasion, the whole engine switched off when I hit this bump.

“Really disappointing because we got ourselves a bit lost this weekend with the set-up and we went back to basic, to the quali. From lap one, I felt back in the game.

“I really feel we would have been in the top four today. Now, we’re not. It was clicking in Q1. We were one of the few drivers not to take any new tyres. I did one corner in Q2 and I was already almost two tenths up already, that would have been plenty enough to be into Q3 with two sets – we had the two hard tyres.

“We had a real chance this weekend, but now it’s up in smoke. Weekend over, so it’s pretty deflating.”

The poor performance in qualifying comes on the back of a difficult race weekend in Imola last time out, where Russell finished seventh and Antonelli retired due to a throttle problem.

Antonelli’s woes in Monte Carlo were of his own making, however, as he crashed at Nouvelle Chicane in the final seconds of Q1, ruling him out of the rest of qualifying.

While he rued the incident, the Italian rookie now thinks Mercedes has the chance to try something different with its strategy choices given the mandatory two-stop rule introduced in Monaco this year.

“I think it was an unnecessary mistake because I think I was already through by then and it’s a shame to finish the session like this,” he said.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“It’s definitely difficult for the team, but George couldn’t do anything about it. While on my side, I did a mistake, so I definitely need to review and see what I need to do.

“We’ll try something with the strategy to see if we can do something, but I just need to reset because it’s been two bad weekends now in a row. I need to reset and come back stronger.”

Russell could also try and vary his strategy given he is also starting further back than anticipated, but he was downbeat when asked what he could make work from the seventh row.

“Well, for sure, there’s going to be some crazy strategies, but we qualified 14th. We probably should have been in the top five,” he said.

“There are 10 cars between me and where we should have been. If people are doing crazy things with the strategy, half of those guys will go one way. The other half will go the other way. Therefore, whichever one we decide, we’re still stuck behind five drivers.”

Pushed on whether he may opt to pit early or run late into the race, Russell replied: “As soon as we know what tyres teams have started on, if they start on a C6, they’re going for a very early one.

“If everybody starts on a hard tyre, they’re intending to go longer. So, as soon as we see what they’re on, we’ll make that choice.”