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George Russell unleashed his fury at Mercedes over his lack of battery charge after he retired from the Belgian GP. He is facing many issues with his W17, but Rob Smedley says he has to focus on himself.
Mercedes are sympathetic towards Russell after he blasted the team following his contact with Lewis Hamilton at Spa. The Brit was complaining about his battery deployment, which was costing him time down the Kemmel straight.
Teammate Kimi Antonelli appeared not to face the same issue and extended his lead in the championship to 45 points over Hamilton with victory at Spa. Russell looks completely dejected as his title chances start to fade away.
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Rob Smedley tells George Russell to focus on his own problems and let Mercedes deal with his ‘phantom’ car issues
Russell felt he was not driving the same car as Antonelli at Spa. The Italian appears to have adapted to the regulations better and is more in harmony with the W17.
Damon Hill thinks something ‘weird’ is going on between Russell and Mercedes, saying that both cars should be ‘identical’. The Silver Arrows believed it was a driving style problem for the Brit, but may have realised the issue lies within the car after seeing his telemetry.
Russell’s explicit radio message after the Belgian GP highlighted his anger towards Mercedes and the car, but Smedley has told the Brit to leave those problems to the team. He believes that they should tell Russell that his issues are not ‘real’, and that he needs to focus on what he can control.
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He said on the High Performance Podcast: “Early on in my career, [what] used to be the big one back then in the late 90s was always dampers, or there’s a problem with the dampers, and we’d have to change the dampers, and you’d be chasing some phantom problem.
“And then I kind of got to the point where I just used to get bored with that, not bored with it, but it’s just too much fannying about.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to get straight to the point and just say to them, ‘Look, here’s everything that we know, and all of the problems where you think where this phantom problem is, it’s not there. So let’s start concentrating now on you.’
Is George Russell fighting with one hand behind his back, or is Kimi Antonelli just too good?
Antonelli extends his lead in the standings to 44 points after Spa!
“And I think with a good driver and a resilient driver, somebody who has an elite mindset that will adapt to that, and they will listen and think, ‘Alright, yeah, fine, let’s stop all the f—— excuses or whatever it is. Let’s get on with it.’
“And I think, if there’s a little bit of the car, but also George, what George needs to concentrate on is the bit that’s George, right? Trust the team to fix the car. It’s not ideal for him, but he has to trust the team that they’re going to fix the car.
“He can’t control how fast the engineers and technical staff can fix the issue on his car, but just trust that they will.”
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