Kimi Antonelli<\/a> are out of contract for 2026.<\/p>\nWith Red Bull struggling for form on track, Verstappen\u2019s future has continued to be in the spotlight.<\/p>\n
Verstappen has been heavily linked with Mercedes over the last year.<\/p>\n
Mercedes considered Verstappen a potential Lewis Hamilton replacement, but the Dutchman wasn\u2019t interested in a move.<\/p>\n
With entirely new technical regulations coming into play for 2026, the current pecking order will likely be flipped on its head.<\/p>\n
Whispers in the paddock have hinted that Mercedes will be the team to beat next year, particularly on the power unit side.<\/p>\n
Speaking to F1\u2019s official website, Coulthard suggested that if Mercedes wanted to change their line-up, Russell should not be replaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen George not being officially signed is slightly bizarre,\u201d Coulthard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the performance right now, even if there was a change in Mercedes\u2019 line-up, you wouldn\u2019t think it would be George who would be the change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a few things we\u2019re all waiting on to fall into place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell focused on performance<\/p>\n
Russell has insisted he\u2019s not worried about his future, given his impressive performances in 2025.<\/p>\n
Alongside Verstappen, Russell has arguably been the best-performing driver this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not something that I\u2019m pressing massively because, as I\u2019ve always said, the performance is the priority, and I feel with the performance I\u2019m showing at the moment \u2013 still in line with the performance I\u2019ve shown over all these years \u2013 I\u2019ve got zero reasons to be worried. But obviously it does help if there was pen on paper,\u201d he said earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t need to chase because I feel that I\u2019m doing a good job. It goes both ways \u2013 I need them, they need me, and that\u2019s how it goes. Mercedes are so ambitious, they want to be back on top.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to understand and think how are they going to bring Mercedes back on top. You need to have the best team principal, you need to have the best drivers in your car, you need to have the best engineers within your team.<\/p>\n
\u201cToto has made it clear to me that he thinks how I\u2019m performing this year is as good as anybody. I think there\u2019s only one driver that you can debate in terms of performance, these are his words not my words.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s why I have no concern about the future, but there\u2019s two seats to every team and I guess he needs to think who are those two drivers going to be for those two seats. I guess that\u2019s what the delay is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"F1 legend David Coulthard has labelled George Russell\u2019s contract situation at Mercedes as \u201cslightly bizarre\u201d, with uncertainty lingering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,817,3875,945,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-14291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}