Mercedes breached the parc fermé rules to work on George Russell’s car after his heavy crash in yesterday’s qualifying, resulting in him starting from the pit lane.
Since the British outfit introduced a new package in Austin, it had no new spare parts to use to fix Russell’s W15. Even though Lewis Hamilton proposed the idea of using his car’s parts to allow his teammate to start from P6, Mercedes evaluated that it wouldn’t be possible to do so.
Therefore, the mechanics had to work to fit old parts on the Britton’s car. Even though there is no penalty for doing so during a sprint weekend, the fact that Mercedes worked past the parc fermé limits, resulted in Russell taking a penalty anyway.
“We had to work on the car overnight during the car’s covered period,” the team stated.
“The workload involved in that was due to reverting on specification to what we ran in Singapore.”
It is certainly going to be a tough race for Mercedes, as Hamilton starts further back in P17, and Russell from the pits.