Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has confirmed that the team plan to thoroughly “check” and “scan” George Russell’s car ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.

It comes after Russell described his Emilia Romagna GP as “absolutely terrible from start to finish” as he battled a mystery issue with his W16 car.

Mercedes to get to bottom of George Russell’s Imola GP complaint

Russell recorded his worst result of the F1 2025 season at Imola last weekend, slipping from third on the grid to seventh at the chequered flag.

The British driver was heard complaining of a strange sensation at the rear of his car as he plummeted down the order, with Mercedes unable to find a cause in the data during the race

Russell was heard describing his day as “absolutely disastrous” over team radio at the chequered flag.

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Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race debrief show, Shovlin confirmed that the team intend to get to the bottom of Russell’s complaint ahead of this weekend’s race in Monte Carlo.

Shovlin said: “He mentioned there was a problem on the laps to the grid [ahead of the start].

“Now it’s not always easy to get a good read on the balance on those laps to the grid. But then saying that, the drivers are pretty good at telling us what they’re feeling. They’re normally quite reliable.

“All we can do on the grid is really get the bodywork off, have a bit of a look at the car, check there’s nothing obvious.

“You’ve only got a few minutes there and nothing, there was nothing that we could see that looked like a problem.

“But then saying that, the car was fine at the end of qualifying and we didn’t do anything to it overnight.

“You go out on the laps to the grid, you’d have thought it would be okay.

“But there was something he was detecting, so that continued through the race.

“We’ve now got the car and all the parts in Monaco. There’s a good programme there to check through the bits, to scan what we need to, to see that nothing has a delamination or something.

“We’ll check that everything’s done up as it should be and make sure that if there is any issue we can solve it ahead of Monaco itself.”

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Russell likened the behaviour of his car to a “forklift truck” on Sunday at Imola, giving his “absolutely terrible” race a 1/10 rating.

He told DAZN Spain: “For me the race was a 1/10—and that’s being generous.

“It was absolutely terrible from start to finish. Well, I had a good start. Maybe the first 200 metres were the best part of our race. We were terribly slow from there on.

“I reported a problem on the lap to the grid. I nearly crashed. The team didn’t see anything wrong, but the issue persisted for 60 laps.

“It’s the race I’ve least enjoyed in a long time. The first race this season that was totally miserable.

“Every team has one of those. Red Bull finished P6-P7 in Bahrain. Today it was our turn.

“This isn’t where we want to be. It’s not an excuse, but it’s reality.

“It felt like the rear of the car was moving independently. You steer the front tyres and it felt like something was broken at the back because the rear was swaying.

“It felt like a forklift truck. Not what you need at a track like this.

“We need to find out what went wrong.”

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