Are Formula 1 drivers among the world’s most patient elite athletes? There are few sports where you can be as good as you like, but if you don’t end up in the right car at the right time, it may all amount to nothing.
Making it to F1 in the first place is a gilt-edged privilege as it is, a rare commodity bestowed on only granted to 22 drivers a year among the thousands of kids on the go-kart ladder, with the deck stacked against those who aren’t of well-heeled descent.
Staying afloat in the piranha club for the long haul is even more difficult, and admirable, but that doesn’t make it any easier for a driver to accept not having a car worthy of your talents. Fernando Alonso is a prime example of wrong time, wrong place, although the ever-green Spaniard has at least had a glittering career crowned with two F1 world championships. Nico Hulkenberg has had to make a comeback from being shuffled out of the series to finally grab an overdue podium.
Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly are stuck on one win like French compatriot Jean Alesi, with the underrated Gasly in particular driving out of his skin over the past 15 months in an uncompetitive Alpine – the shock 2020 Italian Grand Prix winner perhaps one of the most overlooked drivers on the current grid.
The capricious nature of F1 and its reliance on winning machinery is only adding to the sense of urgency drivers start to feel while toiling away in the midfield morass. As was Gasly, the likes of Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Alex Albon were all happy enough to see their peer Lando Norris, a long-time competitor up the single-seater ladder, get to escape the shadows for his moment in the sun.
But it must have quietly eaten at them. ‘That could have been me. That should have been me.’
Will their chance ever arrive? It now looks like it has for Russell, with Mercedes jolting out of the starting blocks of 2026’s divisive rules era. A pay-off for three long years paying his dues with Williams, before joining the main team right as its title challenge hit the skids with a series of bouncing and confusing cars from 2022 to 2025.
Russell graduated to Mercedes just as its title-fighting momentum was lost in 2022
Photo by: Getty Images
When we interviewed him last summer, when Mercedes’s championship calibre car was but a twinkle in Toto Wolff’s eye, Russell remained philosophical over the patience he has had to exert thus far, although he admitted it had been tested beyond its perceived limits.
“I would have hoped, by now, seven seasons in, I would have at least had a year of fighting for a championship,” Russell said. “When I joined Mercedes, we thought every year would be a championship fight. Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that way. It’s been the same for Charles as well.
“Arguably, nobody would have predicted two years ago McLaren would have made this step. Lando did five years with them and had no fight either. So, you’ve just got to accept the fact that that is the nature of F1. That’s always been the case. And you look at Michael Schumacher, he was in his fifth year with Ferrari, in his 30s, before he won a championship with them. I’m 27, so I’ve still got a bit of time on the side.”
With the mercurial Italian teenager taking two wins out of three and looking like the faster of the two in Japan, 2026 is promising to be a fascinating campaign even if it does turn into a two-horse race
Russell overlooked Schumacher’s Benetton years, of course, but his point on the time it took Jean Todt to rebuild Ferrari’s dynasty is valid. Now he is fully entering his prime, there is a sense that Russell must deliver now as there are no guarantees Mercedes’s gap to the others remains intact as the development war is only getting started.
But the Briton is dealing with a rapid young and carefree team-mate in Kimi Antonelli who may not be as experienced but is also not carrying that midfield baggage or exuding that sense of urgency. With the mercurial Italian teenager taking two wins out of three and looking like the faster of the two in Japan, 2026 is promising to be a fascinating campaign even if it does turn into a two-horse race. It’s certainly a film Mercedes has seen before, and one which kept Wolff up at night in 2016.
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They say athletes die twice. Once when they shuffle off this mortal coil, but a first time when their competitive career – that goal which they singularly strove for since childhood and has become their entire identity – is drawing to a close.
Aged 28, Russell is still far removed from that point. But will he ever get a better chance than this at racing immortality? He’d rather not have to find out. His patience has already been tested enough for his liking.
Russell has been patient for his shot at an F1 title fight – now he must take it
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
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– The Autosport.com Team