Meceredes left struggling. They still do not know the cause of Russell's issues

George Russell had a rough ending to the Bahrain Grand Prix. Despite placing second, he had been battling against his car for the last 10 laps. His timing transponder had broken, leaving an issue with the DRS as well as brake-by-wire issues. But what exactly was the cause of all the chaos within Russell’s car?

Lord said, “It's worth saying we haven't got the root causes yet, so we've just arrived back in the factory with about 10 different suitcases of parts and items that we're bringing back, including a pretty frazzled and sort of charred-looking FOM timing transponder and then some other bits of kit as well related to the brake by wire system. So we haven't got root causes yet.”

He then added, “What we know is that we lost the timing transponder just before half distance, actually, and so suddenly there was one lap where we were like, what's going on, because George's name just plummeted down the time sheets."

He continued explaining, saying, “What that also had as a knock-on effect is if you lose the timing transponder, you lose the part of the car that interacts with the DRS mechanism, so for activating DRS, for knowing whether you're within a second or another car, it's within a second of you.”

Russell did, in fact, end up having an issue with his DRS. He accidentally pressed the DRS button when he was not supposed to, and was investigated after the race. Lord said that Mercedes had to contact the FIA to get permission for Russell to manually operate DRS. 

Lord explains how Russell accidentally pushed DRS. He said, “We have a backup radio system in the car that isn't located on the steering wheel, it's a button down in the cockpit. That button, as it turns out, is also the backup and the manual backup for the DRS if that fails."

Can Mercedes figure out the issues before the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix? Or is Russell doomed? Let us know in the comments below!