Mercedes deputy team boss, Bradley Lord has explained the issue that cost George Russell 13 places at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Coming off the back of a disastrous Belgian Grand Prix, the Briton was looking for a strong result that would once again close the gap to his teammate, and despite starting sixth on the grid the Briton was feeling confident. Indeed, the grid penalty his teammate received for a yellow flag infringement, which put him one spot behind, gave Russell even more hope.

However, as the grid pulled away, Russell was left almost stationery, and though he did finally get way by the end of the opening lap he had dropped to 19th.

"What we all saw was that he got anti-stall off the line," explains Lord in the team's video debrief, "and that dropped him to the back of the field.

"The question is why?" he continued. "As the drivers wait for the start, they hold what are called their wait revs, so the engine's RPM, at a specific level.

"As George was doing that, the revs actually rose out of proportion to what he was asking for from the throttle," said Lord.

"The revs hit the rev limiter at the maximum RPM that the engine allows at that point, and then George tried to get it back under control to optimise and control his start.

"He wasn't able to do so, and as he was lifting right off the throttle to under 10% of throttle demand, the lights went out.

"He made a start with effectively much too little throttle through no fault of his own. That meant the anti-stall kicked in, so he dropped to the back of the field."

Though having exonerated the driver, Lord stops short of revealing exactly what caused the malfunction, though he praises Russell for his recovery.

"He picked the cars in front of him off one-by-one as he went through that first stint, and actually was also unlucky with the timing of the VSC at the end of the race," he said.

"It came out one lap after his second stop. Had he been able to take advantage of it and get a free stop as such under the VSC, he could have finished even higher up than his eventual P7 finishing position."

"Obviously the problems are happening, but the whole team feels it as well, so they're as pissed off as I am with how it's unfolded," said Russell in the aftermath. "We need to look at ourselves and ensure there's nothing we're doing wrong that is contributing to these errors.

"Obviously, Oscar had his thing as well," he continued, referring to Piastri's issue at the start of the Belgian race. "It's not like we're the only one, but it does feel like it is happening substantially more to me than others, and hopefully it swings around.

"I don't wish any bad luck on anyone," he continued, "but I've never had a season like this in my whole career, let alone my F1 career. I usually don't feel like I need a break. This year, I definitely feel like I need one."