George Russell will race Mercedes' older-specification car, while Kimi Antonelli will run an upgraded package at the Singapore Grand Prix as the team bid to get to the bottom of why the updates introduced in Malaysia did not deliver the expected performance. The world championship leaders brought their first big upgrade to their W17 cars since the end of May to last week's race but unexpectedly endured a challenging weekend on F1's return to Sepang, with Max Verstappen instead proving the dominant force and claiming Red Bull's first win of the season. In an unusual move, Mercedes will now split their packages across their two drivers for the whole Sprint weekend in Singapore, with Russell - who will start at the back of Sunday's main race grid owing to an engine penalty, following his car's failure last Sunday - running the older aerodynamic package last raced in Baku and Antonelli the one that debuted with difficulty at Sepang.
Russell revealed he was the one who first floated such an idea, with the decision to do so ultimately becoming a "no-brainer" once they knew he was going to be starting last for the Grand Prix this weekend anyway. "Well, actually, I instigated the conversation prior to the race on Sunday," revealed Russell, who slipped a season-high 84 points behind team-mate Antonelli after dropping out of third place with five laps to go at Sepang. "So when the failure happened, it was kind of a no-brainer because we were kind of 50-50 about it pre-race.
"And I was more in favour to do it, even pre-race. Whereas now, it is a total no-brainer." Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player It means Russell will again race with the package he took to an impressive victory in Azerbaijan two races ago. "It is back!" said Russell of the Baku-spec W17.
"Obviously, Malaysia was the worst weekend of the year for us as a team in terms of pace, qualifying result. "Of course, we probably both would have been on the podium [had his power unit not failed], but it was a difficult one. And we don't know whether that was a Malaysia specific or whether that was anything to do with the upgrade.
"There's no major science telling us there's anything to do with the upgrade, but we don't measure performance in F1 on how much downforce a car produces, you measure it with a stopwatch, and the stopwatch wasn't great in Malaysia. "So let's see this weekend. I'm very happy to be back on that package and do the compare.
I'm not really in any sort of fight this weekend, or the championship for that regard, so it's the right place to do it." Russell also revealed that the newer package running on Antonelli's car will be boosted by the arrival of a front wing in Singapore that had originally been due to be part of the initial package at Sepang. "I hope the upgrade that is on Kimi's side works as we expect, because as a team, we need that to be the case, and it would be slightly concerning for us if the new package we had in Malaysia is not working as we expected," he added. "We have a front wing this weekend that Kimi's running that we didn't have in Malaysia.
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