George Russell has reflected on the challenges that have beset his title run during the 2026 Formula 1 season on the weekend his teammate could become world champion.
Russell has endured a season of extreme highs and lows in 2026, as the W17 has both presented the chance and taken away the prospect of winning his first title.
Suffering three DNF’s across the season to date, he enters the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend 123 points behind teammate Kimi Antonelli, the Italian needing only ninth place on Sunday to become the sport’s youngest world champion.
This has left Russell to reflect on a season that started with a dominant win in Australia, only for his momentum and fortune to spiral as the season developed.
Ahead of the weekend’s action in Mexico City getting underway, Russell admitted the one thing he needed above anything else that has been lacking this season, remarking he has never endured a year like 2026.
“Well, I think it’s definitely important for me to try and gain some consistency,” he said to media, including Motorsport Week.
“A couple of races ago, we were on pole by eight tenths and won the race. Then, last week, I finished in P8, and I’ve never had a season like this in my career where the performance has fluctuated so much. I know it’s in there because you can’t deliver performances like that in Baku if you’ve so-called lost it. It’s just that we’re struggling to have a high hit rate.
“We don’t know why that is, and as I said, we’ve never had it. I’ve never had it personally before in my career. I guess that’s probably the priority for me in these last few races.
George Russell admits “frustration” at 2026 struggles
Amid his struggles, Russell has enjoyed standout performances, including his dominant win in Baku, including taking pole position by seven tenths of a second.
But the Briton remains in the dark about why his performances can vary so dramatically, considering his disastrous qualifying in Malaysia just one race later.
“If we had the answer, we’d be able to maybe replicate it more often,” he said.
“That’s been part of the challenge this year, some of the confusion. I came out of Monaco earlier this year, and it was a very difficult weekend for me.”
“I went to Barcelona and was quickest in every session and put it on pole. Went to Austria. The next race, I was on pole again. Then, a few races later, I was qualifying down in P5 and P6. Baku, on pole by eight tenths.
“In Malaysia, I qualified, I don’t know, I think it was P8, maybe. I feel that in the years gone by, I’ve had a pretty high hit rate of reaching the potential of the car. Maybe at the end of the season, there were four or five races that I feel were not maximised.
“I remember 2022, we finished in the top five more than any other driver in the whole season. I think it was 19 from 22 races, and this was the third-best car on the grid. Now this season, we have the best car, and I’m not able to achieve these results. So, yeah, it’s quite strange and certainly has us scratching our heads a little bit. It’s definitely not through a lack of trying.
Russell admits he has now passed the point of frustration, and is now in a period of understanding and analysis to bring out the consistency he says he and the team has.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
Russell has now seemingly accepted that his teammate will be the world champion. The next challenge for the Briton is to learn the lessons from his hard season and apply them to a new title assault in 2027.
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