George Russell was not present in media and engineering duties at the start of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, dealing with illness.
The Mercedes driver travelled to Baku on Wednesday, but was not considered well enough to attend the start of the weekend activities in Padoc on Thursday. A team spokesman said: “George is feeling bad and unfortunately he’s not on track today. He’s up ahead of tomorrow’s track action.”
Drivers must participate in mandatory media mandates on Thursdays of race weekends and often have both engineering and marketing commitments before the tracks running on Fridays begin. Russell’s absence comes at the start of the fly-away round in the last eight races outside of Europe.
Russell is currently fourth in the drivers championship, 36 points ahead of Max Verstappen and 31 points ahead of Charles Leclerc.
FP1 begins on Friday at 12:30pm local time in Azerbaijan, and Mercedes believes Russell is well suited to take part in the rest of the race weekend. Without him, the spare driver Valtteri Bottas would be present in Baku and could intervene as long as he needed to. Finn was a former race winner at the Baku City Circuit, winning the 2019 race.
