Russell says 2026 setbacks left him wanting to get away after Mexico City GP

George Russell said a frustrating Mexico City Grand Prix and Kimi Antonelli’s title win left him wanting to get away after a season he described as relentless.

In qualifying, Russell missed pole by 0.009 seconds to Lewis Hamilton. A deployment issue at Sunday’s start sent him down the order; after contact with Isack Hadjar, he received a 10-second time penalty and finished sixth. Russell said his chief disappointment was missing a chance at a strong result because of something he felt was again outside his control.

Antonelli clinched the championship with third place in Mexico City, becoming the youngest champion in F1 history. Russell said that, in a race-by-race review of the 2026 season with his engineer, they counted 14 races with an issue of some kind and six without. He estimated that in other years there might have been two such races; for 2023, he recalled four.

Russell’s setbacks included a power-unit failure while he was leading the Canadian Grand Prix and repeated problems with straight-line-speed deployment. After Mexico, he skipped his post-race media duties and took time away from the track. Four days later in São Paulo, he said he had continued to pick himself up and was ready to go again.