Mercedes won the Belgian Grand Prix and still left Spa with a problem it cannot explain away. George Russell was out on lap two, undone by an energy store that simply stopped recharging.
He had started well, slotting in behind Max Verstappen at La Source. Halfway up the hill, the car went flat.
"I got to the top of Eau Rouge with 0% on the battery," Russell told Crash.net. "But for whatever reason, the battery decided not to recharge at turn one."
Spa punishes that more than anywhere. Down roughly 35 per cent on power along the Kemmel Straight, he was defenceless.
"I just got totally swallowed up down the straight," he told Sky Sports. "I lost three positions down the straight down into Turn Five."
Contact with Lewis Hamilton at Les Combes pitched him into the gravel and brought out the safety car. Hamilton was given five seconds for it, yet Russell spent none of his frustration on the Ferrari driver.
"The incident with Lewis, honestly, I think was a racing incident," he said. "He didn't do it on purpose. He was more to blame than I, but he didn't do anything reckless."
The real grievance was being there at all: "I got swamped by three cars. I shouldn't have been in that position in the first place, and that's why I'm most angry." He called the power loss itself "quite frankly, it was dangerous, you know."
Toto Wolff put the blame squarely on his own team, and revealed the fault was not confined to one chassis.
"We had an issue on all Mercedes engines that we lacked the power out on the straights," the team principal said. "That hit him badly and it 100 per cent goes on us."
Wolff would rather have this problem than the alternative. "We came out with a product that is so strong and I'd rather fix the reliability," he said, while conceding Mercedes "lost a lot of constructors' points and George's drivers' points."
Kimi Antonelli, in the other car, won. His sixth of the season came after he hunted down Charles Leclerc in the closing ten laps, a virtual safety car having handed Ferrari track position.
"It's great to be back on the top step after obviously a few difficult rounds," Antonelli said. "Was a hard-fought race. We lost first place with a VSC but then we managed to make our way back. Was a tough win because Charles was quick and we had to hold onto that."
Leclerc took second by under two seconds, Verstappen third, Hamilton fourth.
Sky Sports now has Russell 50 points behind his own team-mate. The pattern is what stings.
"No, this time, something totally different, but it's every race, you know," he said of the failure. And on his own state of mind: "I'm numb to the disappointment now. When it happens so often, you just get used to it."
One team, one engine, two championship campaigns heading in opposite directions.
