Russell urges FIA to mandate cooling vests as Mercedes skips development to protect performance

George Russell has publicly called on the FIA to make cooling vests mandatory at hot-weather grands prix, after revealing that Mercedes chose not to develop a bespoke version of the device due to the resource cost involved.

The Mercedes driver made the comments ahead of the 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix, held exceptionally in Malaysia, which carries a heat hazard designation — the third such declaration of the season, with a fourth expected in Singapore the following weekend. A heat hazard is triggered when ambient temperatures for an on-track session are forecast to exceed 31°C.

“We won’t be running the cooling vest because we haven’t put the resource into making it robust enough,” Russell told The Times in Kuala Lumpur. “When it works, it works great. So, I would like to wear it this week, and I would like to wear it next week. But the team asked me — ‘look, we can develop it, and we can put the money towards it, but at the cost of performance’.”

Russell’s proposed solution is for the FIA to either allocate additional budget cap allowance for vest development or commission an external supplier to produce a single system available to all teams. “I feel we need the FIA just to step in and say, ‘Here’s some money extra in the cost cap,’ or there’s an external company who’s going to develop it for everybody, you just put the money towards it. Because we should all be wearing it,” he said.

The issue has roots in the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix, when several drivers suffered heat exhaustion symptoms during the Doha race, which was held in October before being moved to a cooler December slot. In response, the FIA and all F1 teams conducted research into driver cooling, ultimately producing a vest that circulates water through a tube system.

The FIA had initially intended to make the vest mandatory whenever a heat hazard was declared, but driver feedback was mixed. Many felt the standard vest offered meaningful relief for only a handful of laps before becoming more of a hindrance than a help. The vest therefore remains optional; drivers who choose not to wear one must instead carry an equivalent 0.5kg of ballast in the car.

Teams are permitted to develop their own cooling solutions within a defined framework, improving efficiency and ergonomics beyond the standard design. However, with heat hazard events relatively rare across a season, few teams have judged the investment worthwhile — which is precisely the dynamic Russell is asking the FIA to address.