Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said he was "massively annoyed" after the late unreliability that delivered a potentially knock-out blow to George Russell's title hopes in the Bahrain Grand Prix. Mercedes had already been experiencing an unexpectedly difficult weekend on F1's return to Sepang with the team outqualified by both Red Bull and Ferrari despite bringing a long-awaited car upgrade. Although Red Bull's Max Verstappen proved too fast in Sunday's chaotic, twice-delayed race, Mercedes were still on course for second with Kimi Antonelli and third with George Russell when, with five laps to go during the second Safety Car phase, the latter's car was stopped by a suspected power unit failure.
The retirement cost Russell 15 points and saw the British driver slip 84 points behind team-mate Antonelli in the title race with seven rounds left. "I'm so massively annoyed, and not in a happy place," a frustrated Wolff told Sky Sports F1. "First of all, we didn't have the speed that we were hoping to have before the weekend, so there's a lot of homework to be done in order to recover, which I'm sure we will.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "Then the race literally, if you consider the fight with Lewis [Hamilton] behind, went against us. We had such an advantage, one VSC, two Safety Cars, you couldn't be more unlucky. "And to make things worse, a PU failure with a few laps to go until the end for George, which is terrible for his championship and not good at all for our constructors' points.
"So, as much as I love to be here when I look at the pure races, one of my worst experiences, to be honest." Wolff acknowledged the solid race that Antonelli drove to come home in second but was left concerned by the latest incident of Mercedes unreliability. It was the third engine-related issue to force one of the W17s to retire from a race this season, and the team's fourth reliability-related DNF overall. "He scored a few more points than Lewis behind him, and I'm happy because he did the job," added Wolff.
"But it's just the overarching topic, the DNFs, that could cost us dearly, also for the remaining seven races. "A championship is quickly turned around against you if you have a DNF, and that can't continue." Mercedes introduced the first big upgrade onto their car since May's Canadian Grand Prix this weekend but that did not translate into the expected performance in lap time. Wolff, though, is confident the team are already working through the problems.
"I think we have a good action plan," he said. "James [Allison] is fully on top of it with his leadership team. That lifts my mood because I know with such a tremendous group of people - in the same way as that HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] are going to sort it out - but that gives me real relief for the moment to know that they are the best and they are going to find solutions.
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