Russell says difficult 2026 season often left him confused

George Russell was close to tears while being weighed after Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix, where Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli clinched the Formula 1 drivers’ title. In an Instagram post after the race, Russell said his 2026 struggles had been difficult to handle and often left him confused.

He wrote that the season began as he had hoped but quickly unravelled amid bad luck and poor performances. Russell described it as the first proper season of his career in which difficult days outweighed the good, and congratulated Antonelli, saying he deserved the championship.

Russell had started 2026 as the championship favourite and won the opening race, but soon struggled as Antonelli’s momentum grew. Antonelli had nine victories to Russell’s three. The Mexico race brought both a launch problem and a later misjudgment: a glitch in energy deployment at the start left Russell down on power and swamped by the field, but a mistake at Turn Six led him to hit Isack Hadjar and send the Red Bull driver into a spin. Russell received a 10-second penalty and finished sixth, slipping to fourth in the championship as Max Verstappen moved to second ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said Russell was distraught, allowed him to miss post-race media duties and called his absence understandable. Wolff also praised Russell for going to congratulate Antonelli. Antonelli said Russell had also suffered bad luck, a little more than Antonelli himself, described him as very quick and said he would come back. Russell promised to give his all for the rest of 2026 and into next season to rediscover a level he said had been within his reach for most of his career, hoping his luck would return.