Lewis Hamilton has offered to sacrifice his Formla 1 car upgrades to help Mercedes team-mate George Russell have the best chance for the United States Grand Prix.
Russell suffered a high-speed crash at Austin’s Turn 19 in the closing stages of Q3. He ended up skipping across the gravel and into the barriers – bringing out the yellow flags.
The impact damaged his car, which was fitted with the latest upgrades that his team has brought to this weekend’s event in Austin.
With the team only having two sets of the upgrades, one for each driver, there are no spares – so the damage Russell sustained potentially means the Briton having to roll back to the previous development version.
Such a change of specification under parc ferme normally means that a driver will have to start from the pitlane, but as it is a sprint race weekend the rules are different and such changes are allowed without a penalty.
Article 40.4 of F1’s sporting regulations states that this can happen as long as: “The competitor can demonstrate there is a shortage of parts, and provided that the replacement part is of a specification that has been previously used in a qualifying session or a race.”
However, a downgrade of parts will have performance implications and limit Russell’s chances of moving forward from his sixth spot on the grid.
Speaking after the session, Russell revealed that team-mate Hamilton, who was knocked out of Q1, had offered to give up his own parts to help him – but said such a move was unlikely.
“Right now, the concern is about the bits,” said Russell. “We will have to revert on the upgrades.
“Lewis has kindly offered his ones, but we're not going to swap. So I don't know what's going to be happening now, but that's the biggest concern.”
Mercedes will evaluate this evening what the best plan for the race is, but it is thought unlikely that it will accept Hamilton’s offer – as that would require major work to be done across two cars.
Mystery drop in pace
Russell said his crash was the result of him simply pushing too hard to try to make up for a pace deficit.
“All season, when the car is in the sweet spot, we are fighting for poles and wins,” he said. “Yesterday, we were both fighting for pole and today we were both almost out in Q1.
“I really pushed it on that last lap, and ultimately, trying to find performance that wasn't there and paid the price. And I'm really just disappointed with myself, because everyone's worked so hard to bring the upgrades. Now that is in the bin.”
Russell said that, with the team not having made any dramatic set-up changes since the sprint, it was baffling as to why things were so difficult from Friday’s qualifying session.
“We don't have the answers because we keep finding ourselves in this position,” he said.
“It is how the car is interacting with the tyres. The temperature, small changes; the wind, small changes. But it has been the story of the season, old upgrades, new upgrades. Either we're there or we're half a second, six tenths off.”
