While the Bahrain Grand Prix unfolded and George Russell raced in second place, messages slowly came on his radio that different systems failed. Team head Toto Wolff simply stated: “The car was injured.”
The Mercedes driver suddenly suffered a REM-Per-Wire failure and it took time to find the settings to reset the system, Wolff said. He lost the GPS, and he experienced problems with the Reduction System (DRS) on board, which led to his racing engineer to tell him about the radio when he could use the system.
The fear arose that the Brit “would lose the whole line – which would not have meant buttons, no way to turn one of the settings,” Wolff added. While navigating through the last stint on the soft band for more than 20 laps and keeping a rising Lando Norris behind him, not once loses its concentration. But Russell played the performance.
Sunday’s race was perhaps the largest Formula 1 drive from Russell so far, a version that Wolff described as “an incredible drive” for reporters. And although after the race he was confronted with an alleged DRS infringement on an investigation.
But every millisecond, every point win, is important when the margins are so thin in the grid. As Wolff said to Sky Sports: “I think it is the driver who saved the result today.”
What happened to Russell’s car?
During the post-race news conference, Russell admitted that he was happy to see the checkered flag. The Brit was essentially driven in the dark (no pun meaning, since the Bahrain home doctor is a night race).
The Mercedes driver conquered the first setback of the One-Place Raster drop of the qualification and passed Charles Leclerc at the start, holding the second during the race. It only came into question in the final phase when Norris navigated around the Ferraris and started closing the gap to Russell, while Russell experienced a multitude of problems in his car.
All seemed externally, but a series of failures unfolded internally.
“It all felt a moment under control, and then we suddenly had a brake-for-wire failure. So suddenly the pedal went long, and then it was short,” Russell explained, which means he had to push the pedal further or shorter to get brakes.
“I didn’t know what was going on. The steering wheel didn’t work well, so it was really hard to keep Lando behind. I think another round, he would have gotten me pretty comfortable.”
A REM-for-Wire malfunction is essentially when the electronic system that controls the rear brakes is failed. When these malfunctions, the brakes are manually performed by the driver instead of going through a system, making it more difficult to drive the car under braking. Wolff compared it when the power steering system fails in a road car, and to “imagine that you have to adapt between one corner and the next one that it doesn’t have.”
“That was just a very good skill,” he said.
Well said, boss 😤 The best things in life are never easy! ✊ pic.twitter.com/adovtbk0h1
-Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team (@Mercedesamg1) April 13, 2025
Then there was the GPS problem. Russell suddenly disappeared from the timing screens shortly after the period of the safety car, a clear sign that something was wrong. His transponder stopped working and not having that GPS data influenced how he could use DRS. Without the data it became more difficult to judge the gaps – not only on his side compared to other cars, but also for the people around him, such as Norris.
According to Wolff, the Drs Beacon failed, which meant that Russell had to open the system manually. He tried “a override on the drs,” said Russell, and added: “On one round I clicked on the option round and the drs open, so I closed it again, went backwards – won nothing.
“I lost more than I had won, it was only open for a fraction of a second, so a kind of show the amount of problems we had.”
The stewards have investigated the alleged infringement of DRS and stated: “The connection between the automated DRS activation system and the car failed due to problems with a timing loop of an external party.” Manual activation was authorized.
“At the time, the driver experienced a REM-BY-WIRE issue and other electronic problems,” said the stewards. “At that time he was advised to use an auxiliary button in the cockpit that serves as a back -up radio button, but also serves as a manual Drs activation button.”
The stewards confirmed what Russell had shared – that when he tried to use the team radio, Drs “was accidentally activated” when navigating by one of the straight pieces. According to the stewards, the telemetry confirmed the following: “The DRS was activated over a distance of 37 meters at a straight of approximately 700 meters. While won 0.02 seconds, he gave up 0.28 seconds in the next corner to compensate.”
To be clear, that is a violation of the sports regulations; However, no sports benefit was achieved, so no fine was handed over to Russell or Mercedes.
This all happened during the completion of the race and the held off of a McLaren, perhaps the fastest car on the grid so far this season, while it is on soft tires. Russell shared Sky Sports how he had no data on his steering wheel during the last Stint, making it a compromised run.
“I’m not sure how it worked,” said Russell. ‘I saw Charles behind me on the hard and I saw 24 laps to go. I thought: ‘Jeez, how the hell are we going to work? “But we did. “
Russell may have been able to pull this station off, so that he was placed in the driver’s rankings within six points of Max Verstappen, but why these problems arose, was unknown to Mercedes immediately after the race.
“We don’t know, probably looms in the car or something else,” said Wolff. “Perhaps it was activated by the failure in the F1 system, and then it ensured that our system went a bit of bananas.”
Russell dived home with a second place finish (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
What does the result mean for the Mercedes season?
McLaren may be dominated this season, with Oscar Piastri who has caught a second victory and Norris with one of his own, but Mercedes has been consistently at the front, with Russell sometimes the closest challenger, such as on Sunday.
In four races – all different types of traces – Russell has secured three stage finishes and brought them in Australia and China. That kind of performance is sufficient to build trust within a team, especially after the difficult stretch has experienced with trying to find consistency in current regulations.
“This was the real type of test for us. We knew that our car is loving the cold conditions, and the competitiveness that we shown in China and Suzuka was not a big surprise,” said Russell. “But this would be the question mark – here in Bahrain. And we still had a strong weekend. So it’s a good omen for the season.”
The Brit said that Mercedes did not expect to be close to McLaren in Bahrain, on a track where many expected it to thrive on woking -based team. But then Russell qualified second and teammate Kimi Antonelli celebrated before the One-Place Raster drops, and Russell said: “Qualification in the front row was a real surprise.
“And then seeing Lando on a round behind me, I thought:” He is going to fly here in the distance. “Oscar has done fantastic work to control the race, but to keep Lando at a distance, I was really very satisfied with it.”
Mercedes is 58 points on McLaren in the Constructor classification, thanks to Russell’s stage finish. When asked if McLaren was a matter of, Wolff shared that he missed the team on Sunday “a few tenths” and wanted to see how future tracks unfolded. He pointed out how the tide changed last season, with McLaren a big momentum with different races after the end of the sixth and eighth in Bahrain.
But when Russell was asked if the silver arrows were title candidates, he warned against the suggestion.
“I would like to say it, but I don’t think we are honest. McLaren are just too dominant now. I think this will probably be their top performance-which we saw in Bahrain this week,” explained the 27-year-old. “And what we saw in China and Suzuka is probably their sausage-case scenario and they still clearly have one victory from those two races.”
Russell added about the importance of capitalizing at times and picking up points where possible, as they did in Australia and Bahrain.
When the fighting is so close, is crucial in the right place at the right time. We have seen that with Mercedes, as well as the fighting in midfield, so far this season.
“I don’t expect this to take place that there will be a lot of races,” said Russell, “but who knows.”
Additional reporting: Luke Smith
(Top photo: Clive Rose/Getty images)