Mercedes have confirmed that it will check George Russell’s W16 ahead of the 2025 Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix, after he described his Imola race as “totally miserable”.
The Briton endured his worst race of the season at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, dropping to seventh from the second row.
Russell raised concerns about his Mercedes during the laps to the grid, reporting instability at the rear of the car.
The German team, however, found no clear issue in the data as the 27-year-old battled handling problems throughout the 63-lap Grand Prix.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin stated that the team will investigate the anomaly ahead of the Monaco weekend.
“He mentioned there was a problem on the laps to the grid [ahead of the start],” he said during Mercedes’ post-race debrief.
“Now it’s not always easy to get a good read on the balance on those laps to the grid.
“But then saying that, the drivers are pretty good at telling us what they’re feeling – they’re normally quite reliable.
“All we can do on the grid is get the bodywork off, have a quick look, check there’s nothing obvious.
“You’ve only got a few minutes and there was nothing that we could see that looked like a problem.
“The car was fine at the end of qualifying and we didn’t do anything to it overnight.
“You go out on the laps to the grid, you’d have thought it would be okay.
“But there was something he was detecting, so that continued through the race.
“We’ve now got the car and all the parts in Monaco; there’s a good programme to check through the bits, scan what we need to, to see that nothing has a delamination or something.
“We’ll check that everything’s done up as it should be and make sure if there is any issue, we can solve it ahead of Monaco itself.”
Russell rates Imola race ‘1/10’ as car problems derail performance
In the opening six rounds of the season, Russell had yet to finish outside of the top five in a remarkable start to his 2025 campaign.
However, despite another strong qualifying, he struggled throughout Sunday’s race, insisting a car problem held him back.
“For me, the race was a 1/10 – and that’s being generous – it was absolutely terrible from start to finish,” he told DAZN Spain.
“Well, I had a good start; maybe the first 200 metres were the best part of our race, but we were terribly slow from there on.
“I reported a problem on the lap to the grid – I nearly crashed.
“The team didn’t see anything wrong, but the issue persisted for 60 laps.
“It’s the race I’ve least enjoyed in a long time, the first race this season that was totally miserable.
“Every team has one of those – Red Bull finished P6-P7 in Bahrain; today, it was our turn.
“This isn’t where we want to be; it’s not an excuse, but it’s reality.
“It felt like the rear of the car was moving independently; you steer the front tyres, and it felt like something was broken at the back because the rear was swaying.
“It felt like a forklift truck – not what you need at a track like this.
“We need to find out what went wrong.”
READ MORE – George Russell reveals repeat trend that led to ‘dead slow’ Mercedes at Imola
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