George Russell will face a five-place grid penalty at the São Paulo Grand Prix after his Mercedes team fitted another new engine to his car ahead of this weekend’s race at Interlagos.
Russell’s slim hopes of championship glory slipped from his grasp at last weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix, where his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli became Formula 1’s youngest ever champion.
Power unit reliability has been a weakness of Mercedes this year, with Russell suffering a failure at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia that made this weekend’s penalty inevitable.
The issue in Malaysia meant he was forced to take a new power unit -- and grid penalty -- at the following round in Singapore, but with seven races remaining and F1 engines only designed to last six race weekends, he was always expected to take another engine, and therefore another penalty, before the end of the year.
Mercedes opted to take the hit in Brazil as overtaking has historically been easier at the Interlagos circuit than at the other venues remaining on the calendar.
“I mean we always had to take a grid penalty at some point,” Russell said in a post on Mercedes’ Instagram.
“Obviously we took one in Singapore but from Singapore until the end of the season, we felt this was a good place to take it.
“Obviously, Lewis [Hamilton] had a big grid penalty here a number of years ago [2021] and did pretty well.
“Five places doesn’t seem that bad and we’ll try and come back through.”
Mercedes revealed earlier this week that Antonelli was just a handful of laps away from missing out on his crowning podium finish in Mexico due to an oil leak from a cracked sump on his engine.
The issue meant the Italian has also needed to change his engine in Brazil, but he had enough low mileage components in his existing pool of parts to make the change without incurring a penalty.