These are the statistics that prove George Russell is a sook.
Following a shattering mechanical failure at the Belgian Grand Prix that saw him lash out at his own team and, once again, point the finger at his car, news.com.au can reveal that championship leader Kimi Antonelli has had just one less reliability issue than the British driver — who is looking to blame anyone but himself for his championship collapse.
You can watch Russell’s outburst in the player above.
And that one issue is the entire gap between a would-be No.1 driver confronting his championship failure and a kid on his way to a dream title.
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A season-long audit of Mercedes’ breakdowns shows Russell has experienced five reported issues, compared with Antonelli’s four.
Russell’s five include: a precautionary power-unit change in Melbourne as well as a catastrophic main-battery failure on lap 29 in Canada that sparked a thermal event, which killed his engine and cost him a race he was leading.
There was also the Monaco weekend spent struggling for pace in a chassis rebuilt from scratch after that fire; a Belgian qualifying session in which a power-unit deployment issue cost him roughly half of his 0.37-second gap to Antonelli; and a Belgian race in which his battery failed to recharge exiting Turn 1 on lap one.
That left him 30-40 per cent down on deployment before he collected Lewis Hamilton and retired.
Antonelli’s four include: the same precautionary Melbourne swap on debut; a battery and electrical shutdown on lap 62 of 66 in Barcelona that cost him a certain second place; a brake duct part that worked loose at Silverstone on lap 41, forcing two extra pit stops, a 5s track-limits penalty, and zero points from what should have been a likely win.
And the same Mercedes-wide deployment gremlin at Spa, to a lesser degree – which he overcame to take pole and win anyway.
Same team, same faulty batteries, same maddening gremlins. Yet Antonelli’s the one standing on top of the podium and at the top of the standings, while Russell fills the airwaves with expletives.
Russell has blamed everything but himself for his championship position, going back as far as Canada, where he was so incensed by his lap-29 retirement from the lead that he hurled his headrest out of the cockpit while cars were still streaming past — an outburst that later forced him to apologise to stewards for failing “to set a good example.”
He topped it off by blaming “the gods,” insisting: “It feels like somebody doesn’t want me to fight for this championship.”
He hasn’t let up since. His latest outburst came at Spa on Sunday, when the battery gremlin left him a sitting duck on the Kemmel Straight before contact with Hamilton ended his day on lap one.
”I reached the top of Eau Rouge with zero per cent on the battery — quite frankly, it was dangerous,” Russell said. An unheard team radio message revealed what he really thought of his own crew: “I had no f***ing battery down the straight! Guys, unacceptable. Un-f***ing-acceptable this whole weekend.”
Russell continued his sob story when he returned to the garage.
”I’m numb to the disappointment now,” Russell said. “When it happens so often, you just get used to it,” he added. “It’s one thing after another, after another, after another. Not good enough on all regards.”
Meanwhile, the driver alongside him, who has been through practically the same wringer, hasn’t spent a single race blaming the garage. After his own Silverstone heartbreak, Antonelli simply said: “I just showed that I have the mindset that I try every time I go on track, I do my best, that I try to give everything.”
No spray, no headrest, no stewards’ summons — just a kid focused on the next chance to score.
Team boss Toto Wolff said Spa’s power issue “affected everyone,” including Kimi, “but hit George hardest.”
Fair enough. But while Russell has certainly crashed out of two grands prix due to genuine mechanical failure, it doesn’t explain why a rookie in the same car has beaten him in what was supposed to be his championship year.
Antonelli lost a near-certain win and scored zero points at Silverstone without torching his own team on the radio.
He then backed up and won the next big one at Spa, extending his championship lead to 45 points over Russell, who has now slipped to third behind Hamilton.
One extra issue. A season of tantrums. And a title that’s going to go to the rookie who got on with the job.