Russell reveals he pushed for Mercedes upgrade split before Bahrain failure

George Russell has pushed back firmly against the narrative that Mercedes are in disarray over their aerodynamic upgrades, revealing at the Marina Bay Street Circuit that the decision to revert to an older specification was his own idea — formed before his power unit failed in the closing laps of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

When Mercedes announced they would run split packages in Singapore, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli continuing on the new updates while Russell returned to a baseline setup, the paddock widely interpreted the move as a panicked, reactive measure. Russell says that reading is entirely wrong.

“Well, actually, I instigated the conversation prior to the race on Sunday,” Russell confirmed during his media availability in Singapore.

The timing made the call straightforward. Already facing a mandatory engine penalty for Singapore, Russell had little to lose by using the race as a controlled test of the older package. “So when the failure happened, it was kind of a no-brainer because we were kind of 50/50 about it pre-race,” he explained. “And I was more in favour to do it, and I was even pre-race, whereas now it just, yeah, it is a total no-brainer.”

Russell also pushed back on the suggestion that the team’s new aerodynamic package is fundamentally flawed. He pointed to the extreme performance variance the team experienced with an unchanged car earlier in the season as evidence that circuit characteristics, not the upgrade itself, are responsible for the pace deficit seen in Malaysia.

“There’s no signs telling us the upgrade was not working,” Russell said. “We know the car we had in Baku was the same car as we had in Budapest and Zandvoort. And Baku we were on pole by eight tenths and in Budapest, you know, we were four tenths off the pace.”

With a swing of over a full second possible between circuits on identical machinery, Russell is confident the brutal Sepang surface is the primary culprit. “We’re pretty confident it’s a Malaysia specific,” he added.

The split-package approach in Singapore therefore serves a dual purpose: it gives Mercedes a direct back-to-back data comparison between the two specifications at a street circuit, while Russell’s grid penalty already limits his realistic points ceiling for the weekend. How Antonelli fares on the newer package relative to Russell’s baseline will give the team clearer direction on where the development programme stands heading into the remainder of the season.