Russell to have 'deep, deep look in mirror'

Published3 hours ago

George Russell says he plans to have a "deep, deep look in the mirror" to work out how he can improve after a disappointing 2026 season.

The Mercedes driver has watched team-mate Kimi Antonelli dominate on his way to becoming the youngest Formula 1 champion in history, while Russell has won only three races compared with the Italian's nine, despite starting the year as championship favourite.

Russell says luck has not been on his side, but wants to ensure he does everything he can to understand why he has lacked pace.

The Briton said: "It wasn't meant to be this season but you also need to look at yourself in the mirror and think: 'What could I have done better'?

"Is all of the misfortune truly misfortune? Or is it actually things in our control that could have been better?

"So you need to just have a deep, deep look in the mirror and pick yourself up again and go from there."

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Russell said he and his team had analysed the season so far and worked out that he has had a trouble-free run in only six of this season's 20 races.

"These issues constantly keep popping up but unfortunately this always seems like it's on my side of the garage," he said.

"We concluded we've only had six races from the 20 where we've had a clean weekend. So to think 14 of those weekends have had issues is unbelievable.

"We need to look to understand why that is, if there's something we are overlooking or if it's just pure misfortune. At the moment it does seem like it's more misfortune than anything.

"In a normal season you might have two weekends or three weekends where there are issues. We've had three quarters of this season and that has been incredibly unfortunate."

He said it was the fact that he had been struck by another technical glitch that made him skip his media duties after last weekend's Mexico City race, rather than the fact Antonelli had just won the title.

Russell, who started second to Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari, had a loss of power on the run to the first corner when the electrical part of the power-unit did not reply properly.

He was swamped by the field, and then collided with Isack Hadjar's Red Bull at Turn Six, earning himself a 10-second penalty. He finished sixth and dropped from second to fourth in the drivers' championship, behind Antonelli, Max Verstappen and Hamilton.

"In racing you always pick yourself back up and for me the best way to pick myself back up was getting out of there," Russell said on media day for this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

"It was as simple as that, really. I was just very upset with missing out on the chance of a good result because the championship for me was already over but I just couldn't believe how things had panned out again.

"In that moment, yeah, I just wanted to get out of there.

"I think I'm 99% of the time a true professional and I try not to spit my dummy out, but sometimes missing out on doing the press – OK, it's not ideal but not the end of the world.

"Moments like that you don't really want to deal with it."

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