Why Russell did not cross the finish line at the Canadian Grand Prix

For George Russell, despite hitting the wall early in the race, points proved possible in Canada. However, the Mercedes driver was called in from eighth place by his team, meaning he could not crown his race with a top-ten finish after coming through the field. Mike Elliott, chief technical officer, confirmed that problems with the brakes were at the root of it.

More than once this season we have seen Mercedes having problems with the brakes. For example, Russell and Lewis Hamilton both complained about this frequently during free practice in Azerbaijan. So at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which is very tough on brakes, Russell lost a lot of World Championship points because of those issues.

"The DNF itself was actually due to brake wear," Elliott said in a debrief from the German formation.  "You push the brakes really hard at a circuit like Canada; it's a lot of big stops, and we could see in our telemetry data the brake wear on George's car was getting out of control. We could also see that we weren’t going to make the end of the race if we carried on as we were. We could also see that where he was in traffic, in the DRS train, having to overtake the cars in front of him, it was almost going to be impossible to manage his brakes, and, unfortunately, we had to retire the car."

No major further damage

This news from Elliott shows that Russell's failure is not related to his earlier crash in Montreal. Apart from a broken front wing and a broken rim from that crash, the W14 suffered no further significant damage. According to Elliott, the floor and rear wing remained virtually undamaged, meaning they can be used again in Austria as normal.