{"id":739313,"date":"2026-06-16T03:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T03:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739313\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T03:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T03:21:10","slug":"mercedes-reveal-pit-crew-made-incorrect-adjustment-on-russells-car-at-last-pit-stop-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739313\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes reveal pit crew made \u2018incorrect adjustment\u2019 on Russell\u2019s car at last pit stop \u2013 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Russell\u2019s<\/a> final stint in yesterday\u2019s race was compromised by his team making a mistake at his final pit stop.<\/p>\n

Mercedes revealed it encountered a problem changing the front wing level on Russell\u2019s car when he made his final tyre change. Formula 1 teams use adjustment \u2018guns\u2019 which quickly apply a pre-determined adjustment to the wing mechanism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our final pit stop we actually incorrectly adjusted the front wing owing to a problem with the adjuster gun,\u201d Mercedes\u2019 deputy team principal Bradley Lord said in a video released by the team. \u201cThat meant he was driving with a very, very oversteery balance that certainly compromised his pace in the final stages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell was narrowly leading his team mate when the stint began. Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> passed him with five laps to go, but suffered a technical problem soon afterwards which ended his race.<\/p>\n

However Russell was beaten to victory by Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, who pitted once more than the Mercedes driver. Afterwards Russell indicated he would have preferred to match Hamilton\u2019s three-stop strategy.<\/p>\n

Lord said the team stuck to a two-stop strategy as they believed Russell would have fallen behind Hamilton even if he had pitted immediately after the Ferrari.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs often happens at circuits where the degradation is high and the temperatures are high, it\u2019s quite finely balanced pre-race between two and three stops,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe felt a two-stop was preferable, and even when Lewis pitted very early in the first stint, we covered with George to retain track position, as that matters in Barcelona.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time they got to the second stop for the Ferrari, Lewis boxed, and he was just within undercut range, so that meant we couldn\u2019t pit George and retain track position over the Ferrari without potentially coming out behind him. So we chose to commit to the two-stop strategy with both cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton\u2019s cause was aided by a Virtual Safety Car period which halved the amount of time he lost making his final pit stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true to say Ferrari were a little bit fortunate with the VSC that put Lewis out on track ahead of our cars at that final pit stop,\u201d said Lord. \u201cHad that not happened, then he\u2019d have had to fight his way through the field. It doesn\u2019t mean the result would have necessarily changed, but we could have put ourselves in a stronger position to claim that win.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell\u2019s final stint in yesterday\u2019s race was compromised by his team making a mistake at his final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-739313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}