George Russell’s admission after qualifying that he has been struggling to maximise the Mercedes car all season felt like a seminal moment in the championship fight.
Russell pointed to driving style, saying Antonelli had struggled in last year’s car and now he was struggling in this one.
Until then, Russell had looked for external reasons to explain his difficult start to the season.
There have, indeed, been many.
He suffered a gearbox problem and then a front-wing issue in qualifying in China, which may well have denied him pole.
The safety-car timing in Japan handed the victory to Antonelli, and vaulted him ahead of Russell.
It’s a bit of a stretch, however, to claim Russell would have won in Japan without that, because McLaren’s Oscar Piastri led the first stint, and stopped in the same window as Russell before the safety car, and Russell didn’t pass the Australian all race.
And in Canada, Russell was leading when his MGU-K failed to cause his retirement.
At the same time, the reason Russell’s admission felt important is the impression for some time is that he has been struggling to keep up.
In China, Antonelli had the same front-wing issue as Russell on his final run – albeit his session was not disrupted in other ways, as Russell’s was – and still claimed pole.
And after both dropped behind the Ferraris at the start, Antonelli’s race-craft was much more decisive in passing them.
In Japan, Antonelli was on pole, and dropped back only because of a poor start. And such was his pace on medium tyres in the first stint of the race that Mercedes felt he was on target to run longer and claim the lead anyway, even without the safety car.
In Miami, there was no argument, Antonelli was simply faster. And although Russell took pole for the sprint and grand prix in Canada, won the sprint and was leading the grand prix when he broke down, Antonelli was all over him in both races and looked faster. The destiny of the win in Montreal was far from certain when Russell retired.
In a way, Russell’s decision to finally admit he is struggling might be a good thing.
Last year, Lando Norris was in a similar position at McLaren. Having beaten Piastri convincingly in 2024, and so entered 2025 as favourite, Norris struggled with the characteristics of the car in the early part of the season.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
With assiduous work from Norris himself, and also from the team – both technically in terms of making changes to the car, but also psychologically in helping Norris get on top of his situation mentally – he bounced back and won the title.
Russell is in a difficult place, 68 points behind Antonelli, but it is far from unrecoverable.
As he put it on Sunday: “I want to get racing now. The season has been disjointed. I still very much believe in myself and know what I can do. I think we’re not even 30% of the way through, but there’s a lot of points down the drain.
“When I look at things objectively, if things were balanced out a little bit more, I still think it would have been very, very close. He’s doing an amazing job, but I think I’d have at least two more victories to my name.
“I still very much believe in myself. I still believe we’re going to be fighting for race wins for the end of this year.”
