Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the team needs to work to restore George Russell’s confidence after the British driver blamed a lack of speed for the collision that ended his Belgian Grand Prix and damaged his Formula 1 title chances.<\/p>\n
Russell was trying to retake fourth place from Lewis Hamilton around the outside when the Ferrari driver clipped his rear wheel and sent him spinning into the gravel trap, putting him out of the race on the first lap.<\/p>\n
In an expletive-filled message to Mercedes over the radio, Russell directed the blame at the car, not Hamilton, saying it was \u201cunacceptable\u201d he’d had a dramatic loss of speed on the previous straight, dropping him from third to fifth behind Hamilton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a new problem but it wasn\u2019t only on George\u2019s side. Instead, it affected all the Mercedes engines, some more, some less, and Kimi (Antonelli) too,” Wolff told Sky Sport Germany, suggesting a software problem was to blame.<\/p>\n
“We have an engine that\u2019s incredibly strong, a car that is fast but simply not stable enough and we need to get on top of that because we\u2019re losing valuable points in the constructors\u2019 championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolff added: \u201cWe just need to try to make the best possible equipment available for him. That\u2019s not just a fast car and a good engine but something that holds up and gives him confidence in the car again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antonelli went on to win the race, doubling his advantage over Russell to 50 points. Russell is now third in the standings, five points behind Hamilton, who got a five-second penalty for causing their collision.<\/p>\n
\u201cCar crossed over right in front of me,\u201d Hamilton said, adding he’d lacked front-end grip to avoid the collision because he was following another car closely.<\/p>\n
Russell has been struggling to match Antonelli’s pace in recent races and, even before Sunday’s race, had suggested an issue with the Mercedes car may be holding him back after he lost out in straight-line speed to Antonelli in qualifying.<\/p>\n
Russell told Sky Sports he had \u201cno words at the moment\u201d after the incident, when asked about the impact on the title race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe incident shouldn\u2019t have happened if I had the speed down the straight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the team needs to work to restore George Russell’s confidence after the British driver blamed a lack of speed for the collision that ended his Belgian Grand Prix and damaged his Formula 1 title chances. Russell was trying to retake fourth place from Lewis Hamilton around the outside when … Continue reading Mercedes to take action as George Russell fumes at loss of speed before his race-ending crash<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-22 03:45:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1525929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525930,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525929\/revisions\/1525930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1525929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1525929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1525929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}