Mercedes handed 'several months' setback as investigation delayed

Mercedes is set to wait "several months" for the ERS module that failed on George Russell's car in Montreal to return to the UK, delaying any investigation into the component itself.

According to Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord, Russell's W16 suffered a "sudden sort of kill of the ERS system", ultimately leading to the Briton's retirement from the Canadian Grand Prix on lap 30 while leading.

The failure of Russell's battery triggered a complete power unit shutdown, handing Kimi Antonelli a comfortable fourth consecutive victory of the season.

Russell's shock retirement saw the King's Lynn-born driver fall 43 points behind his team-mate, increasing the pressure on him to bounce back immediately next weekend in Monaco.

As for Mercedes, while it can analyse the data from Russell's car, it must wait several months to receive the failed hardware, as it is being shipped back to the UK rather than flown.

The situation also puts pressure on the Brackley-based team to understand what went wrong and how to avoid further issues based solely on the data, a challenging task without the failed component itself.

"It was absolutely no fault of George's; he drove brilliantly all weekend and I think would have been a very worthy winner of the grand prix as well after his performance to take two pole positions and the sprint win," Lord said on the Nu Silver Arrows radio show.

"It was a sudden sort of kill of the ERS system on the car as he came into turn 8 and then that did a reasonable amount of damage afterwards as well. We got the car back and were able to get the module out of it. 

"It had to undergo some unusual safety procedures and then has to be shipped back actually to the UK. 

"It will therefore be several months before the hardware gets back and we need to really dig through the data to understand exactly what went wrong and then work out how we try and prevent a repeat on any of the other modules in the future."