How Russell's struggles showed Mercedes has to chase tyre issue

During the Imola race Russell told his team that it felt like the W16 suspension was broken

Russell had his most difficult race of 2025 so far in Imola [Pic: @tinnekephotography]

George Russell has had a good run of results for the Mercedes Formula 1 team in 2025, including four podiums.

However the W16 has often been harder on its tyres in races than its main rivals, even if it’s not always been obvious given the solid scoring. However at Imola that trait proved to be costly.

Even on the laps to the grid before the start Russell thought the rear of the car didn’t feel right, and as the race developed at one point he even suggested that it felt like a rear trackrod was broken, so unstable did it feel even on the straights.

The situation nudged him towards an early stop and like others who followed that route he dropped down the order when the VSC came those who hadn’t already pitted a cheap tyre change.

At one stage it looked like he might not even make the points, but he hung on and eventually salvaged seventh place, while admitting that he was lucky to do so. Not great given that he was third on the grid, but it could have been worse.

“Very odd,” he said when I asked about his issues. “On the laps of the grid, I was reporting problems with the car, and I thought something was wrong.

“My team had a good look round, and saw nothing. And that feeling continued for 60-odd laps after, so we had absolutely zero pace.

“There's clearly a trend. The track was really hot today, when it's hot, we're nowhere. When it's cold, we're quick. That was the trend last year, the same trend this year. So, yeah, we need to try and solve that.”

The issue appears to have been purely tyre related, despite his comparison with a suspension breakage.

“Well, it didn't feel quite right,” he said. “It was just like my rear wheels were moving. So we'll review it. There was nothing obvious standing out, but just even in a straight line, the car was moving around, but the rear tyres were through the roof.

“We do have a bit of a fundamental. It's either fronts are overheating, or the rears are overheating, circuit-to-circuit. But it's not the first time we've reported that, so it was probably just the first time where all of our rivals probably had a semi decent race.

On the plus side Russell had a race that he described as “an absolute disaster” and still landed seventh place and six useful points.

In 2024 seventh was a pretty normal result for Mercedes, at least in the first half of the season.

“I think the fact is every team has a disastrous race weekend at some point,” he said. “This is our first one of the season. Red Bull had a disastrous one in Bahrain. This is our sort of first one of the year.

“So of course, I'm not very happy. But you know, your car isn't going to be podium position week in, week out. That's what we've been doing recently. There's no excuses. It's just reality of F1. You have all these different tracks, different tyre compounds, different temperatures.”

It’s clearly something that the team has to address, as trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted.

“We've got to get on top of that quickly as there are a lot of hot races coming up,” he noted. “And we can't continue to perform at this level. We've got a few days to regroup before Monaco, but we'll be working hard to try and improve from here.”

At least another Mercedes W16 trait might be useful next weekend: “Quali pace has been decent this year,” said Russell. “So that's the only promising thing.”