George Russell makes stunning Mercedes admission after F1 title collapse

George Russell has made a stunning admission about Mercedes after his hopes of winning the 2026 Formula 1 world championship suffered another blow.

The 28-year-old British star came into the season as favourite to claim his first world championship, and started the season well with victory in the season opener in Australia.

But since that day in Melbourne in March, Russell has won just twice more while 20-year-old Italian team-mate Kimi Antonelli has topped the podium nine teams.

The end result sees Antonelli on the brink of becoming F1's youngest ever world champion at Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix, while Russell is left to rue a major missed opportunity.

While the British ace has suffered significant mechanical misfortune in 2026, he offered a very honest self-assessment of his performance when speaking to media in Mexico City.

“Now this season, we have the best car, and I'm not able to achieve these results,” Russell said.

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Russell has the best car, why can't he get the most out of it?

Russell is still trying to understand why he has struggled to consistently match Antonelli, despite Mercedes having the dominant car on the grid.

"Well, I think there's just a few factors with the cars this year that potentially favour or hinder a certain driving style," he continued.

"I've always been a driver who focuses on the middle to the exit of the corners, which often means I'm on the throttle earlier than most. With these new power units, that means I'm spending more energy, and it's sometimes not the most efficient way to drive for the power unit.

"Secondly, the tyre pressures this year, especially on the rear, have been very, very high. Pirelli have taken a few PSI margin, especially on the rear axle. Again, that has hindered me a little bit by pushing the exits. The rear tyre can't cope with it as well, and there's been a bit of a hindrance on the power unit side.

"These two factors have really hampered my natural driving style. I'd say that's probably been the biggest thing this season."

Forgetting frustration and finding solutions

Russell says he has gone past some of the frustration and disappointment which he clearly felt earlier in the season, and is now trying to be logical and systematic about finding solutions.

"I think I've gone past the... Maybe frustration was the word I used earlier in the season, but I'm looking at it very objectively with my team and trying to keep a cool head in solving these issues.

"I know that if the frustration starts to creep in and we start acting irrationally with changes, there's a very high chance you won't make things better. As I said, these performances are in there. I've lost no faith that we can do it because we've shown that.

"When I've looked at some other drivers from the past who have had uncompetitive seasons, it's been an uncompetitive year across every single race. That has not been the case for us.

"We've either been very competitive or not competitive. So we're just really trying to understand what made the good races good and what made the bad races bad."

Antonelli relationship remains a good one - Russell

Despite being eclipsed by Antonelli in the title race, Russell says he has been able to maintain a really positive relationship with the brilliant young Italian.

"Yeah. I mean, on a personal level, Kimi is obviously a great guy with lots of energy. We've had no reason this year not to continue a good relationship. I think a lot of these rivalries start because of on-track incidents or actions.

"The truth is he's been at a higher level than me this year, so we've not really been in that situation too often. We've had one or two races, and when it comes to the race itself, we sort of keep ourselves to ourselves and work with our individual engineers to try and get the most out of it."

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Written by

Graham Shaw - Consultant Editor

Digital sports leader with 30 years of senior level experience running global brands. Built sportinglife.com to be a behemoth in the UK as well as being in charge of the Planet Sport network of sites including planetf1.com, football365.com, teamtalk.com and planetrugby.com. Then grew goal.com to be the world's biggest soccer website in 18 languages and 37 territories. Was GM of Portals for Perform Group (now DAZN) with overall responsibility for sportingnews.com, spox.de and voetbalzone.nl.

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