Mercedes’ George Russell is set for a grid penalty at the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix, following an unavoidable engine change after his late retirement in Malaysia.
While on course for a podium finish, Russell suffered a power unit failure during the closing laps of the Bahrain Grand Prix and had to pull over to the side of the track, marking his third non-scoring round of the season.
The DNF has impacted his title hopes as teammate Kimi Antonelli extended his lead to 84 points in the driver’s standings and Russell’s likely penalty at the Marina Bay Circuit will make that gap even harder to close.
He was expected to take a new engine later in the season once Mercedes had capitalised on the FIA’s ADUO (Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities) programme to introduce a new upgrade, however the damage from Malaysia means that they have been forced to bring it forward to Singapore.
Russell will therefore exceed the season allocation of power unit components and be penalised, with the regulations specifying that a grid penalty will be imposed at the first event where each additional element over the quota is used.
The penalty will be a minimum of 10 positions depending on the exact parts Mercedes switch out – effectively, the more new parts, the greater the grid drop.
The incident was the latest in a string of reliability problems for Mercedes in 2026 – Russell previously retired from the Canadian Grand Prix due to a power unit failure, while Antonelli suffered in Barcelona.
Malaysia was obviously a very difficult weekend for us. We have spent the days since then working hard to understand why our performance was not where it should have been. We have identified several areas we need to investigate further, but F1 doesn’t offer simple answers and we need more evidence before drawing firm conclusions. Singapore gives us an immediate opportunity to continue that work. The characteristics of the circuit are very different and that will help us build a clearer picture of where we are. That is why we will evaluate both the latest update package and our previous specification across the weekend to ensure we fully understand the direction we need to take. George has the added challenge of a power unit penalty, which will mean starting from the back of the grid on Sunday, following the engine failure in Malaysia. That is particularly frustrating given the way he drove last weekend and the result he deserved to be fighting for. Unfortunately, these things are part of the sport and our focus now is on giving him the best possible car and opportunities to fight back through the field. We need to maximise this final Sprint weekend of the year, keep learning, and score the strongest result we can with both cars. Singapore will be an important test of our understanding and our resilience as a team.
Toto Wolff, ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
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