George Russell has explained that while he still shares “a good relationship” with Kimi Antonelli, his team mate has simply “been at a higher level” over the course of the 2026 season.
A superb start to the year established Mercedes as clear frontrunners, but instead of the more experienced Russell enjoying the upper hand, it was the Italian who quickly built up a lead in the drivers’ standings.
Although no driver wants to be outperformed by their team mate, Russell admitted ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix – where Antonelli will seal his maiden title as long as he finishes no lower than ninth – that they’ve not allowed the season to impact their working relationship.
“On a personal level, Kimi is obviously a great guy with lots of energy,” the Briton said. “We’ve had no reason this year not to continue a good relationship. I think a lot of these rivalries start because of on-track incidents or actions.
“The truth is, he’s been at a higher level than me this year so we’ve not really been in that situation too often – we’ve had one or two races. When it comes to the racing itself, we keep ourselves to ourselves and work with our individual engineers to try and get the most out of it.”
Despite issues with reliability and inconsistency, Russell has demonstrated that he is able to get the W17 into the perfect window and make the most of it – in Baku, for instance, he qualified on pole position by eight-tenths and held off Max Verstappen for victory.
But that memorable performance was followed by a retirement, P9 and P8 over three rounds, leaving him to question why there’s been such a gulf between his good and bad weekends.
“I think it’s definitely important for me to try and gain some consistency,” he said. “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’. We’re struggling to have a high hit rate. We don’t know why that is and as I said, I’ve never had it personally before in my career. I guess that’s the priority for me in these last few races.”
Asked whether he’s formulated a plan to beat Antonelli in 2027, with both drivers set to remain at Mercedes, Russell added: “I’ve been working with a sports psychologist for seven years now. That was through my most successful years in F1, and now of course, this has been the first year of real struggle.
“I think at least in the approach I have, we’re not boxers where you’re in a ring fighting directly against somebody else. We’re kind of fighting against ourselves, almost like a golfer in the way that a Qualifying lap, you’re there by yourself and it’s the work and preparation that you’ve done yourself that makes the difference to a good performance.
“I’m not directly looking at my number one competitor saying, ‘how am I going to beat this guy?’. It’s more that I’m looking at myself in the mirror thinking, ‘what do I need to do to not have these poor performances, and what were the feelings I had from myself and the car during the great performances to replicate that more often?’.”
