Mercedes acknowledges that the team orders issued in Mexico came far too late – in hindsight, a decision should have been made much earlier.
George Russell finished the Mexican Grand Prix at the weekend in seventh place – but says he could have finished higher up if Mercedes had issued team orders in his favor earlier in the race.
Russell was stuck several laps behind his teammate Kimi Antonelli, and when Mercedes finally instructed the rookie to let Russell pass on lap 41, it was already too late, according to Russell. “There was no point in doing that anymore,” said the Brit.
“Either you do it immediately or you don’t do it at all,” Russell explained after the race, because: “At that point, my tires and brakes were overheated and the engine was also starting to overheat.”
As a result, he was unable to gain any more positions after the swap and ultimately gave sixth place back to his teammate shortly before the end. Mercedes team representative Bradley Lord has since confirmed that the team order came far too late. “In Mexico, it was very difficult to overtake due to the low downforce, especially because of the dirty air phenomenon, which now seems to be more significant than ever since these rules were introduced in 2022,” he explains in a team video.
“So it was a tricky situation, and we probably didn’t handle it quite right,” he admits, explaining: “We let Kimi drive in such a way that he could conserve his tires so he could get through with one stop.”
“He did exactly what was asked of him,” Lord clarifies. Russell, on the other hand, had ‘pressure’ from Oscar Piastri in the McLaren behind his teammate and was also stuck in Antonelli’s “dirty air.” That’s why the Brit repeatedly asked for a position swap over the radio.
“We finally decided to swap, and looking back, I think that regardless of whether we had decided to keep the positions or swap, it was the delay that didn’t work for us,” Lord said.
“The lesson learned is that we should have acted more decisively by either asking to hold the positions or swapping positions instead of waiting as long as we did,” admits the Mercedes man.
In the World Championship, Mercedes slipped to third place behind Ferrari in Mexico after a mixed result with P6 and P7. Charles Leclerc’s second place means that, with four races to go, the Scuderia is now one point ahead of the Silver Arrows again.