Hungarian GP: George Russell pressured to vary Mercedes energy unit after water leak in qualifying

George Russell has been pressured to vary his energy unit forward of the Hungarian Grand Prix after a crack on his engine brought on a water leak in qualifying.

Russell certified a disappointing seventh for Sunday’s race, though he’ll begin sixth forward of team-mate Kimi Antonelli after the championship chief was given a three-grid place penalty for rushing.

Russell got here to a halt on the finish of Q3 because the staff detected a lack of water stress, which suggests the Mercedes driver will tackle his fourth energy unit of 2026 however won’t be hit with a grid penalty because the change is to the identical specification and doesn’t take him above the season-limit of 4 engines.

Mercedes consider the water leak occurred after Russell ran over the exit kerb at Flip 4 throughout his remaining run in Q3, the place he didn’t enhance his lap time.

“We lost water pressure and I had a water leak. When I stopped on track, the car was leaking a load of water,” Russell, who’s 50 factors behind championship chief and team-mate Kimi Antonelli, instructed Sky Sports activities F1.

“Fingers crossed it doesn’t affect anything for the race.”

It’s the newest unreliability problem for Mercedes which has impacted each Russell and Antonelli in current races.

Each drivers have misplaced priceless factors as a consequence of engine-related retirements this season however Russell was “lost for words” on the earlier race in Belgium after a bug within the energy unit software program led to a scarcity of straight line velocity efficiency and a race-ending collision with Lewis Hamilton at Spa-Francorchamps.

Mercedes have mounted the bug for this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

“The software is the same for all the cars, and it was there in every car, but it affected George more than Kimi,” defined Mercedes technical director Simone Resta on Friday.

“We also need to bear in mind that, when comparing their performance in the last few races, Kimi was on a fresher power unit, which is, of course, always a bit better than quite a used power unit.

“That can change within the subsequent races once we begin to have a brisker energy unit on George’s facet. So, there is a little bit of every thing. There is a little bit of software program, however there’s additionally Kimi being out of section with George’s programme. You sum up every thing whenever you have a look at the ultimate end result.”

Russell: Would have been good to be larger up

However, even previous to Saturday’s water leak in Hungary, Russell was off the tempo in comparison with team-mate Antonelli – a continuation of their tempo hole throughout the European run of occasions.

Russell will begin one place forward of Antonelli and can look to make inroads into his 50-point championship deficit however the British driver is not sure how simple it is going to be to get into the combat for the rostrum to doubtlessly restrict the harm.

“We were probably even further on Friday but we had the strongest race pace, which tends to say it’s not a car problem but a tyre problem,” he mentioned.

“Time will tell in the race if we struck the right balance between the qualifying setup and race setup. We probably know we could make the car faster in qualifying trim at the expense of race performance.

“It will be troublesome to overhaul. It might have been good to be larger up.”

Sky Sports F1’s Hungarian GP schedule

Sunday July 26
7.35am: F3 Feature Race
9.05am: Porsche Supercup
10.20am: F2 Feature Race
12.30pm: Hungarian GP build-up: Grand Prix Sunday*
2pm: THE HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX*
4pm: Hungarian GP reaction: Chequered Flag*
5pm: Ted’s Notebook*

*Also on Sky Sports Main Event

Formula 1 is in Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix with Sunday’s race at 2pm and build-up from 12.30pm, live on Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports Main Event. Stream Sky Sports activities with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime