George Russell suffered "catastrophic failure" in Canada confirms Mercedes technical boss, James Allison.

The Briton was battling teammate Kimi Antonelli, when, on Lap 29, he missed the second chicane and pulled to the side of the track, thereby allowing the Italian teenager to cruise to victory and extend his title lead.

Allison has now revealed the cause of the retirement, the reaction to which earned Russell a suspended €5,000 fine for an "unsafe act".

"It was a big weekend for us," admits Allison. "Key, because it was the weekend where we introduced our first major upgrade for the year and we were looking for it to be strong.

"It was, but a weekend that was otherwise extremely good from a performance point of view was marred by the disappointment we all feel for letting George down with the reliability of the car," he adds.

"On George's PU failure, it was an engine kill caused by a failure in the battery, which just suffered a catastrophic failure a third of the way into the race and brought George's race to an end there.

"We can see enough at the end of the race that the battery was fairly unhappy," says the Briton. "There's some heat damage there, and we'll have to figure out in the coming days and weeks exactly what caused that and put it right."

LATEST NEWS

more news >

LATEST IMAGES

galleries >

Click to go to the main galleries section

READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Chester, 29/05/2026 11:44

"I am not sure batteries work well at all when you push hard. They add complication and extra weight- and are there to satisfy OTHER interests besides motorsport. And that to me is a hard fail."

Rating: Neutral (0) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

2. Posted by Team Hack, 29/05/2026 10:45

"A shame as if George had been able to get to a Marshal’s post someone there might have had some jump leads.
"

Rating: Neutral (0) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

3. Posted by Max Noble, 29/05/2026 8:50

"Sorry @Tyrbiter - “This particular design and implementation of battery power has no place…” As noted in my Corvette article, the top of the range (and fastest) current model Corvette is a hybrid, as are the current Ferraris. It’s not an issue of correctly executed. It’s when the FIA can go bananas on design rules, limitations, and all sorts of nonsense that it goes to pieces…
"

Rating: Positive (4) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

4. Posted by Tyrbiter, 28/05/2026 23:04

"Battery power really has absolutely no place in most motorsport, especially in F1. I do hope that those in a position to fix this actually do what they know they must."

Rating: Positive (3) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

Russell's Montreal DNF down to battery failure

LATEST NEWS

RELATED ARTICLES

LATEST IMAGES

POST A COMMENT

Post your comment

READERS COMMENTS

Share this page