Russell and Mercedes to ‘Look at Ourselves’ After Hungarian GP Anti-Stall Setback

Mercedes identifies the cause of Russell’s Hungary setback

George Russell says he and Mercedes must “look at ourselves” to ensure they are not contributing to the run of problems that has affected his season, after the team identified what caused his Hungarian Grand Prix start failure.

Russell started sixth at the final race before Formula 1’s summer break, but his Mercedes W17 went into anti-stall when the lights went out. He bogged down and fell to 21st and last, with Sergio Perez starting from the pit lane. Russell recovered to finish seventh and score six points, but the result left him 59 points behind team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the championship. The gap had been 25 points after the British Grand Prix, before the Belgian and Hungarian double-header.

The incident followed a separate problem in Spa, where Russell reported a serious lack of straight-line speed. Mercedes traced that issue to a calibration problem, while the team has now established the sequence behind the Hungary launch failure. The episode is also part of a wider story covered in Russell’s growing list of 2026 setbacks.

How the anti-stall system was triggered

Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord explained that drivers hold “wait revs” before the start, keeping the engine at a specific RPM. As Russell performed that procedure, the revs rose disproportionately to his throttle demand and reached the rev limiter — the maximum RPM allowed at that point.

Russell then tried to bring the revs back under control to optimise the launch. However, as he lifted completely off the throttle and dropped below 10% demand, the lights went out. The anti-stall system activated, sending him to the back of the field.

Russell focuses on controllable factors

Before the cause had been confirmed, Russell said he would work with his engineers to establish whether anything on his side of the garage was inadvertently contributing to the errors. He stressed that the frustration was shared across Mercedes, but said the problems felt as though they were happening to him substantially more often than to others.

“It is not like we’re the only one, but it just feels like it is happening substantially more to me than others,” Russell said. “I’ve never had a season like this in my career, let alone my F1 career.”

Asked how he could avoid a negative spiral, Russell said he needed to separate controllable performance from events beyond his influence. His pace in Hungary had been fine and he felt he had followed the correct procedure, but the anti-stall had ruined the race result.

“I usually don’t feel like I need a break, but this year, I definitely feel like I need one,” he added.