an angry radio message<\/a> as he sat in the gravel trap after his early retirement, Russell had labelled what he faced all weekend as \u201cunacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\nSpeaking after the race, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had explained that analysis by the team had uncovered an unspecified problem on Russell\u2019s engine that had contributed to a lack of deployment on the final run.<\/p>\n
Wolff suggested that this problem accounted for around half the deficit to his team-mate \u2013 with a different driving style also having an impact.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the Hungarian GP, more details of what Mercedes found have emerged \u2013 as well as a more detailed explanation of what went wrong on lap one.<\/p>\n
The problem that Russell faced in qualifying was related to an element deep in the code on his power unit that meant his deployment was being front-loaded around the lap.<\/p>\n
This meant that, as part of the adjustments that are made by the algorithms to manage energy around the lap, it was more biased to using extra energy on the run to Les Combes.<\/p>\n
This, allied to some differences in how he and Antonelli then impacted harvesting and battery usage around the middle sector, meant he was short of power for the run to the final chicane.<\/p>\n
Having uncovered the issue in the code that got exposed in Belgium, Mercedes has put countermeasures in place from this weekend to try to make sure that there are no repeat problems.<\/p>\n
Deployment should also not be too big a factor in Hungary as it is a much more energy-rich\u00a0circuit layout.<\/p>\n
The lap one issue<\/p>\n
Mercedes has also got to the bottom of what went wrong on the opening lap as well, with both Russell and Antonelli lacking deployment on the run to Les Combes.<\/p>\n
The issue was triggered by a software error, meaning that neither car harvested as much energy as anticipated on the entry to La Source.<\/p>\n
Then, with extra battery power being drained on the way out of the hairpin to help fill in a gap for turbo lag, it meant neither driver had the energy they had hoped for on the run down the Kemmel Straight.<\/p>\n
With F1\u2019s regulations restricting the ramp down rate for both drivers when batteries are being deployed, this meant that neither had the kind of extra kiloWatts available they had expected when hitting the boost button.<\/p>\n
But the outcome for both drivers was not the same because they had taken Eau Rouge differently, which meant they were not in the same energy restricted modes.<\/p>\n
Russell had taken Eau Rouge flat, which meant that he was locked into a ramp down rate that left him stuck at a speed of 308km\/h (191mph) for a time.<\/p>\n
Antonelli, meanwhile, had to lift off the throttle through Eau Rouge after Max Verstappen had overtaken him, which put him into a slightly different engine mode with a bit more power available.<\/p>\n
While still down on what Mercedes had hoped for, he got locked into ramp\u00a0down slightly later, so\u00a0was at a higher top speed compared to Russell \u2013 which was enough to allow him to draft past Verstappen for the lead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mercedes Formula 1 team has made deployment software modifications ahead of this weekend\u2019s Hungarian Grand Prix to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-818694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818694","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=818694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}