15 March 2024 , 10:19
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Mercedes have eased fears of a problem on George Russell's car after the Briton reported his concern on the final lap of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Russell was running in sixth at the time which is where he ultimately finished, three places higher than team-mate Lewis Hamilton. But he was worried during those final seconds of the race that he wasn't going to be able to hold on.
He reported a puncture over the radio after feeling something wrong with his car. But he still managed to finish sixth anyway, holding off the impressive charge of debutant Oliver Bearman who was a few seconds down the road in his Ferrari.
In a video posted by the team, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained what happened on that final lap. He said: "[Russell] came on the radio, as you'll have heard, and said, 'Front right puncture'. So he was concerned that he did [have one].
"Now, what he was feeling was a vibration that suddenly appeared. He was concerned that it was the tyre that was losing air about to fail. But we can just look at our data and we can see that the tyre was fine in that sense. We can see the pressure on all four tyres live. So we would spot a puncture normally before even the driver sees it.
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"Certainly, if it was a relatively slow puncture we'd say it before the driver. So we reassured him that that was fine. He said he could still feel a vibration. We checked the level of the vibration was nothing to concern us, we could see something, but it wasn't out of the ordinary.
"We were able to check that the brakes are all fine, which is obviously one of the key things. So we went back again and said, well, car looks fine for us. We told him the gap to the car behind just so that he knows he doesn't need to push. There's no one within four seconds, and he can actually take it easy for the remainder of the lap."
A damaged tyre is obviously not a long-term issue for the team - more concerning would have been a problem with the car itself. As Shovlin went on to say, Mercedes have to wait to find out if there was anything wrong with the tyre.
Fortunately, their analysis has not thrown up any other problems with the car either. He added: "When we got the car back, checked everything. That all looks fine. Now the tyre, we can't check because that belongs to Pirelli. So they've taken that off for analysis. But as I said, everything we can see, it looks okay.
"There was vibration data, but that can be as little as you just get some of the rubber pick up can get stuck on a tyre, can actually put it quite out of balance. So we'll let Pirelli do their investigations. But certainly, from our side from the point of view of the car, there's nothing that we can see that's a problem."