Russell reflects on turbulent 2026 season ahead of title decider

George Russell has reviewed the difficulties that have marked his championship campaign during the 2026 Formula 1 season, as his teammate stands on the verge of securing the world title.

Russell has experienced a season of significant fluctuations in 2026, where the W17 has simultaneously offered the opportunity and removed the prospect of him claiming his inaugural championship.

Having suffered five DNF’s throughout the campaign, he arrives at the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend 123 points behind teammate Kimi Antonelli, who requires only a ninth-place finish on Sunday to become the sport’s youngest world champion.

This situation has prompted Russell to reflect on a season that began with a commanding victory in Australia, only for his momentum and luck to deteriorate as the year progressed.

Ahead of the Mexico City weekend, Russell said his priority was to find greater consistency after a season of performance swings unlike any he had experienced before.

“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 has endured a season plagued by persistent issues.

George Russell admits “frustration” amid 2026 struggles.

Despite his difficulties, Russell has delivered exceptional performances, such as his dominant victory in Baku, where he secured pole position by a margin of seven tenths of a second.

However, the Briton remains uncertain regarding the reasons for his dramatic performance variations, particularly after his poor qualifying result 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 states he has moved beyond frustration and is now in a phase of understanding and analysis to achieve the consistency he believes he and the team are capable of producing.

“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 appears to have accepted that his teammate will be crowned world champion. The British driver’s next task is to extract lessons from his difficult season and apply them to a fresh title challenge in 2027.