When it comes to the Monaco Grand Prix, your qualifying position can make or break your race — and failure in George Russell’s Mercedes has him declaring ‘weekend over.’

The Briton completely lost power after hitting a bump on the main straight during Q2, meaning he’ll have to start the Monaco Grand Prix from 14th place on the grid.

George Russell declares ‘weekend over’ after Monaco quali failure

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

A good qualifying position can make or break any race in Formula 1, but that’s perhaps more true at the Monaco Grand Prix than anywhere else.

F1 cars have long since outgrown the narrow, twisting streets of Monte Carlo; the large cars of the modern era tend to operate as rolling road blocks, which makes on-track passes quite the rarity.

That fact was painfully obvious at the 2024 running of the race, when the top 10 cars finished in the same order in which they qualified.

Because of that, Mercedes driver George Russell has declared his “weekend over” after a suspected electrical issue saw his W16 grid to a halt in the tunnel, leaving him with 14th position on the starting grid on Sunday morning.

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As Russell set off to start his flying lap in the second phase of qualifying, he’d gone no further than the straight when his W16 suddenly began to slow. He was able to drive it into the tunnel, but there, it completely switched off.

Mercedes explained, “George lost power after hitting a bump coming out of Turn 1 and was unable to restart the car after trying a number of switch change.

“It looks like a potential electrical problem at this stage.”

But it was a costly problem that saw him drop out of qualifying on the spot.

When asked what caused the issue, Russell told media, including PlanetF1.com, “It was a bump in the straight.

“It’s a bump that’s been there all weekend. It’s a bump that I felt all weekend, but for whatever reason on this occasion, the whole engine switched off when I hit this bump.”

The Mercedes duo of Russell and Kimi Antonelli haven’t had the smoothest start to the Monaco weekend. Russell went from sixth in FP1 to 12th in FP2, only recovering to 11th in FP3. But that seemed about to change.

“Really disappointing, because we got ourselves a bit lost this weekend with the setup, and we went back to basics for quali,” Russell explained.

“From Lap 1, I felt back in the game.

“Also Kimi stayed for quali more with the setup that he had for FP3. I went back to something that we knew. He was struggling, and we were there.

“And I really feel we would have been in the top four today, and now we’re not.

“It was clicking. We were one of the few drivers not to take new tyres.

“I did one corner in Q2, and I was already almost two-tenths up and already that was plenty enough to be in Q3 with two sets. We have the two hard tyres.

“We had a real chance this weekend, but now it’s up in smoke and weekend over. It’s pretty deflating.”

In an effort to avoid the parade-style race of 2024, the FIA World Motor Sport Council has introduced a mandatory two-stop strategy for all drivers in Monaco this year, thus producing a possible strategic opening for Russell — but the Briton isn’t confident it will be enough.

“For sure there’s gonna be some crazy strategies, but for this, we qualified 14th. We probably should have been in the top five,” he explained.

“So there’s 10 cars between me and where we should have been.

“If people are doing crazy things with the strategy, half of those guys will go one way, the other half will go the other way.

“Therefore whichever we decide, we’re still stuck behind five drivers.”

Russell noted that his No. 63 Mercedes team has two sets of hard tyres available, which may be able to help them find an advantage — but he’s keeping his expectations in check.

Russell will line up in 14th for Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix. His teammate Kimi Antonelli will be just behind him in 15th after crashing at the end of Q1 and failing to make a lap in Q2.

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