Mercedes "chasing" George Russell improvement after…

Mercedes "chasing" George Russell improvement after messy Belgian GP Friday

Mercedes says it has identified clear areas of improvement for George Russell to bounce back after a low-key start to his Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix weekend.

Kimi Antonelli led the way at Spa-Francorchamps with a 1m45.944s lap set one-third into second practice. Team-mate Russell had a less straight-forward session, ending the day in eighth over 1.2s in arrears of his championship leading team-mate with a 1m47.229s effort.

Recently, Russell has made inroads on Antonelli's championship lead in terms of points, with the gap now 25 points. But the 28-year-old still has his hands full when it comes to matching his younger team-mate on outright pace, and has acknowledged that he will have to step up his game to stay in the title fight. In that regard, Friday in Belgium was not a particularly auspicious start to the final double-header before the summer break.

Onboard footage and GPS data shows Russell had a compromised passage through Les Combes, leaving lap time on the table on exit of Turn 7 as he backed off the throttle unlike Antonelli. He then seemed to pay the price on the run between Pouhon and the Fagnes S, where he and Antonelli initially had exactly the same speed profile before Russell appeared to run out of energy sooner. The Briton also had a lower top speed between Blanchimont and the Bus Stop chicane.

(Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images)

According to Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, Russell's tyres were out of the window at the start of the lap, and he underestimated the grip on offer in some of the corners following a tough first practice session in which both Mercedes cars took the wrong set-up direction.

"It's not a great lap for George but it was only one lap, so if that doesn't go well you look like you're off the pace," Shovlin explained. "But he felt he didn't have the tyres ready for the start of the lap, which means a bit of a loss.

"There's a few corners where it looks like he might have underestimated the grip level but given the first session that we had it's not a big surprise. There's bits for him to work on, but we can see a lot of it in the data that we'll be chasing and I'm pretty sure he'll be there tomorrow."

The knock-on effect of F1 2026's power unit rules

The drastic energy harvesting requirements of 2026's power units, especially on a high average speed circuit like Spa-Francorchamps, means a compromised corner speed then has a knock-on effect on the following straight.

"The problem is if the corners are slower, it affects the deployment," Shovlin explained. "When you're at an energy-starved track like this one, like Silverstone, those differences are really magnified."

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes (Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images)

Expanding on Mercedes' sluggish start in FP1, when its drivers were down in sixth and eighth, Shovlin said: "It was a messy first session where we didn't have the car in the right place. We thought there'd be a bit more grip than there was, but it looks like other people pitched theirs a bit better. But then we had a chance between sessions to reposition it all, and drivers were a lot happier with the car in the afternoon.

"There's a few bits on George's side that we're trying to just get to the bottom of. There was a problem with one of the homologated FFMs [fuel flow meters] in the morning session that left him a bit down on power to Kimi. That's been solved, there's a few other little bits and pieces to pick up.

"I think even Kimi felt he didn't have a perfect lap, but we're going to have to find a bit because we can see that the others are pretty close. To us on pace, particularly on the long run, everyone looks quite similar."