Breaking Down The Race Start & Russell's Troubles In Belgium | F1 TV Palmer's Analysis

So let's have a look at the start of the race and there are two big issues going on. Speed differentials across the cars as they deploy energy from the battery at different points and a crash for George Russell. So let's pick it up with the lights going on and we'll look at the top six and see how they play out. So that's the first McLaren car of Oscar Piastri at the back of that six and you can see as we pause it here they're fairly evenly away, although Russell's already under a little bit of pressure from from Charles Leclerc on the second row. But he does well at the first turn, gets in towards an apex and manages to punch out with enough traction as well. But then both Mercedes at this point haven't got a huge amount of energy deployment. Russell tumbles down and out front now you've got Max Verstappen going around Kimi Antonelli for the race lead. Charles Leclerc putting a lot of pressure on George Russell, that's the third position, but he doesn't make it through because Russell does somehow have a bit of deployment coming through Eau Rouge and manages to shut the gap. So they're all picking up a slipstream down the Kemmel straight, usually so powerful, but for Russell now he is tumbling down as Charles Leclerc gets warp speed and joins the top three. So you've now got two pods of three, you've got the race for the lead where Antonelli's now taken back the place on Verstappen who deployed a little bit more going into Eau Rouge at the cost of the run up the Kemmel straight. Leclerc absolutely flying down this straight, so is Hamilton, so is Oscar Piastri and he's getting ahead of George as we now get towards the moment of incident. So you've got two pods of three, Antonelli leads, Leclerc's in second and Verstappen's run down to Eau Rouge hasn't paid off, but behind that you've now got Lewis Hamilton quite a long way ahead of George Russell here coming in towards Les Commes and you've got Oscar Piastri also trying to make the move, Mercedes power unit in the McLaren and the Mercedes of course. But let's take this one slowly now with Russell, it was a five second penalty that Hamilton was given for this and I think that's harsh, I think this is a racing incident. We'll go slowly with Russell who has a nice bit of space on the outside line here and he uses it to go deeper on the brakes and he has that opportunity because the rest of the cars are just bunched a little bit more on the inside, so Piastri here can do nothing about that. But Hamilton's going to release the brakes just slowly and try and carry the speed in to match George, but he cannot do any more than that because Max Verstappen is just ahead, so he's just limited by a car ahead and a bit of dirt here, but what he has to do is be in control and he gets towards an apex as Russell now looks like he's going to sweep around the outside line and as we play this through once again slowly you can see the trajectory of all the cars and Hamilton has made it towards an apex, he's on a very similar line to Leclerc ahead, to Antonelli ahead, in fact Max in third place here is the man that's just hugging that apex a little bit more to try and come back to the top two through the second and third parts, but there's nothing strange about Lewis Hamilton's line at this stage, he is being pinched a little bit by George who's entitled to do that, he's left the car's width on the apex but with that comes a little bit of risk as well for Russell and as we play that out Hamilton is gonna just drift into the side of George, there's the momentary contact and then in catching it there's a bigger contact and you can see actually as we wind it back the rest of the car's behind also struggling to stick to that apex as well so you've got Piastri in a little bit deep for the McLaren actually on a wider line than Hamilton, the racing bulls you've got Lawson going around the outside of Lindblad giving a little bit more room which George maybe could have done and in hindsight should have gone a little wider to give a bit more margin to Lewis, Colopinto is going to go off the road as well behind, so you've got a tight pack and and a bit of contact that has big consequences for the Mercedes out front, we see it from this angle once again and you can see Russell swamped on the straight, we'll come to that in a little bit but let's stick with the incident for the moment, comes from behind, goes for that outside line, it's absolutely a fair attempt here from George round the outside, he's given space to Lewis on the apex but it's just super super tight, Lewis then has a momentary wash wide, has a bit of contact and that spins George Russell out and through goes Oscar Piastri as well past the two of them but for me this is the sort of thing you get in a first lap racing incident is why there's a little bit of wriggle room with that first lap in terms of the stewards, we often don't see these penalized because you have dirty air in play, you've got cold tires in play, you've got such small margins and generally you wouldn't see a penalty for this, so let's see it on board with George Russell, looks to be trying to attack the front guys until he has absolutely no energy to you, so Leclerc comes past like he's an F2 driver and Hamilton comes past as well, so George now late on the brakes, it's a decent attempt, it's absolutely fair from from Russell round the outside and he has to do this sort of thing when he hasn't got the straight line speed, so he does that, keeps the lock applied and with that is the little bit of risk and Hamilton ends up into the side of him and that's Russell out and very very frustrated, but if we see it once again from Lewis's point of view you can see the other side of the coin here of how marginal this is on a first lap with the usual mitigations in place, so Lewis now is well ahead of George Russell, hits the brakes, momentary release which causes him to close up towards Max Verstappen but he's now getting the car back under control, has a little bit of a rear lock coming in but it doesn't stop him from being under control at the apex, he gets his car right up to the white line on the inside and he's much closer actually to the apex than the front two as well and as he comes through there is just a small wash of understeer there but it's very very marginal and this contact here left front into the side pod of Russell is going to flick his Ferrari into that oversteer and then that makes the contact look way worse, but it's the first bit contact then that just washes the Ferrari loose and now he's going to take out George Russell and that's Russell out from the championship positions then and Piastri has another good view of it, tries to come up behind the Ferraris and I thought this was an interesting example here because you've got another driver trying to go a little bit late on the brakes but look how wide Oscar goes, still struggling with that snap on the way in to Lecombe but he's a lot wider than Hamilton there, of course he doesn't have a car on the outside so he's entitled to be a little bit wider as well but all in all I thought that was a very harsh penalty for Lewis Hamilton, marginal bit of racing differences and I think stewards probably should have been a little bit more lenient on Hamilton there. On the first lap you've got dirty air in play and you're looking for a tiny bit of understeer, a little bit of lost downforce and that's all it was and there was a little bit more space that George could have gone should he have wanted to avoid a little bit of risk as well so on a rare occasion you've got both Ferrari and Mercedes drivers, Hamilton and Russell agreeing with me and both team principals also agreeing that this one was a little bit harsh from the stewards and Hamilton I don't think deserved the five second penalty for such a small incident on the first lap of course with dramatic consequences. But let's get to the second part of the start shenanigans and this is actually the bigger part that George Russell was frustrated about so we've got a question on this. Why is George Russell so disappointed with the performance of his car? Well we've just seen a very clear illustration that he doesn't have straight line speed and on circuits like Silverstone and Spa, probably Austria as well, you can't fight if you don't have straight line speed so George won the race in Austria but it was with a rear guard drive and he just held on ahead of Max and Kimi. Silverstone he was very disappointed, Toto Wulff batted it away on the cool down lap at the end saying the car's fine. As Spa evolved it looks like it's not fine for George Russell. So let's have a look at the Eau Rouge corner on the first lap. So Toto Wulff said after the race all Mercedes cars struggled with energy deployment at the start and it's true that Ferrari come absolutely flying past but when you compare Russell with Antonelli and with Piastri of course with the Mercedes power unit you can see a big difference. So George deploys a little bit more through Eau Rouge and now he is going to be an absolute sitting duck whilst Antonelli can go attacking Verstappen, Russell is just falling back and that in the back of the McLaren is a Mercedes power unit as well so there's clearly a big deficit that Russell's carrying at the start of the race here compared to his teammate and compared to Oscar Piastri. So that would frustrate me if I was George Russell to hear the team boss there keep trying to deflect from what is clearly an issue that George is facing that some of the others aren't. The data is here as well from the top five at the start of the race and you've got Russell in the rusty red colour down on the straights compared to Antonelli, Verstappen and the two Ferraris. You've got the rusty red we'll call it, it's like brown colour, the lowest down towards Eau Rouge and that's where Leclerc is trying to put pressure on him and Russell holds on. He is in fairness the quickest man through Eau Rouge as you get a couple of drivers lifting, you've got Lewis Hamilton lifting off quite strangely but he's in traffic trying to judge when to go flat out over the top of the crest. You've got Antonelli as well having a lift in the blue down here because Max Verstappen's just got ahead of him into Eau Rouge so that will affect their speed a little bit and you can see that in Eau Rouge where the pink and the blue line of Hamilton and Antonelli drop down but then once again we hit the straight up the Kemmel straight and Russell is very very low in that brown colour. You've got Max Verstappen out front, no slipstream and he's already deployed his battery down the hill of course taking the gain that comes with that huge speed in the race lead and he's the only driver comparable to Russell coming up the hill bearing in mind Max has got no energy and a Red Bull with no slipstream that's not saying a lot for the Mercedes in the pack. Later on you've got Antonelli then having no slipstream in the blue as well but overall you're looking at this and just thinking yes George Russell has no straight line speed, he's very very frustrated and around Spa if you have that particularly the start of the race you're just not going to compete so I think that is why as well he goes aggressive on the first lap, he takes a bit of a risk to try and pass Hamilton and it doesn't pay off but it all stems from his lack of straight line speed and it all comes from qualifying as well, it's a frustration that's building for George and this is the qualifying trace of Russell compared to Antonelli through through Q3. So you've got Russell in the red, you've got Antonelli in the blue and there's a really interesting part of this which is the end of the lap and it's this run coming through Blanchimont up towards the bus stop where both cars are derating so they're running out of energy but Russell's is running out of energy sooner and it costs him a huge amount of speed on the way to the bus stop. There is a good few tenths here for George as you can see from this line just going up at the end, it's fairly even between the two Mercedes until you get to that end point. So how do you break this down? Well interestingly at the start of the lap you have to assume that both Mercedes start with 100% battery and at the start of the lap it's pretty even between Russell and Antonelli up the Kemmel straight. So at this point here you've actually got Russell fractionally up on Antonelli and the deployment, you can see the straight line speed here, is pretty even across the two cars. You've got Russell a little bit quicker through Eau Rouge, you've got Antonelli fractions quicker up the straight and that is how it should be across teammates with the same machinery in theory. But as the lap goes on now you deploy battery and you deplete your resource so you have to recharge it in the middle sector and that is where it seems Russell's car is not working as well as Antonelli's car here and you've got a couple of moments already played out. The one is into the bus stop, the other one is also coming through Pouhon on the exit here where both cars are absolutely flat out and Antonelli's just picks up that little bit better and it gives him lap time as you can see down here. There's a best part of a tenth of a second coming out of Pouhon up to Fania, not the longest run but on Spa where you've got loads of full throttle sections it all adds up incrementally. So it looks to me like there's two possibilities here for George Russell. Start of the lap is good, end of the lap is bad, so he's not recharging the battery well enough and that's what the middle sector is basically for in Spa. You have to get the battery topped up because it's such a long run up to the bus stop. So why is he doing that? Well, number one, is it his driving style? Is there something in there that George is not able to use, maybe the MG UK, maybe some engine braking, some harsh downshifts to get that deceleration through and get that battery topped up? And Mercedes were thinking that after Silverstone particularly saying it's in George's driving that he's not able to top the battery and there's nuance of what Kimi's doing that's making a difference. But as the weekend's playing out it does seem more and more like there's just something not working quite as well with George Russell's battery. Now is it an inefficient MG UK that's not able to harvest when he's wanting it? Is it a bit of a battery seep somewhere where he's not able to retain the energy that's going into the battery? Somewhere in there this is a very clear indication that when they get to this point and the start of the third sector Kimi has a lot more energy to use than George. So somewhere in there is the deficit that Russell's carrying and it's very, very frustrating for him. The final bit that's very interesting with this is the McLaren data. Now remember they are using Mercedes power units as well. So Mercedes bolted in a new power unit for Austria reliability improvements but a little bit of an upgrade as well and McLaren only got that for Spa. Now you will notice straight away that the trajectory here is exactly the same, Piastri versus Norris. So you've got Oscar in the red actually neck and neck with Lando through two sectors of Q3. You can see the time delta here is pretty much zero between them and the deployment looks pretty even across the board until that long final run up to the bus stop where the red line is just solidly lower than the blue line showing he doesn't have the energy to use even though the driving, the gear choice, the braking shape, everything looks remarkably similar between the two McLaren drivers. So once again here it looks like there's some component in these Mercedes power units that's delivering for one driver and not the other and that is why George Russell is very frustrated. I think Mercedes have to do a huge amount of scratching around here to figure out what's going on. Budapest would be better but if you're driving around with a deficit in the straights that is something out of the driver's control and you feel like you're a sitting duck, particularly at Spa.