But after a pair of engaging races in Miami and Canada, Russell<\/a> publicly backed the current iteration, believing the power delivery was key to his wheel-to-wheel battle with team-mate and title rival Kimi Antonelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n George Russell, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, 2026 Canadian GP<\/p>\n \u00a9\u00a0XPB Images<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI loved it. I thought it was great,\u201d said Russell of his close-quarters engagement.<\/p>\n \u201cI have not had a battle like this in year. I\u2019ve not seen a battle like this, probably since Lewis and Nico in Bahrain 2014. And these new cars allow you to do that. These new engines allow you to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why anyone wants to change them, because we had amazing battles in Melbourne. We had great battles in China.<\/p>\n \u201cKimi and I had great battles today and yesterday, and that\u2019s only possible because of how these power units are.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, after his praise, it was a power unit issue that saw Russell retire in Canada<\/a>, costing him vital points in the championship, with Antonelli\u2019s lead now standing at 43.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Antonelli has taken control of the F1 title race<\/p>\n In cool conditions and on a track where maintaining heat in the tyres is notoriously difficult, McLaren drivers Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a> started the race on intermediate tyres, despite the track being largely dry.<\/p>\n After making strong starts, the pair quickly dropped back and were forced to pit for slick rubber.<\/p>\n Reflecting on the conundrum ahead of the race, Russell said: \u201cYeah, it was very challenging to pick the right tyre, but we knew as soon as we had temp that the slick would be the best.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIt was just challenging. In these cold conditions, the only way you get the grip is by pushing the tyres for temperature.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cSo, you\u2019re just threading that needle of how hard you push but knowing the consequences are quite big. But the pace was good.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has questioned why rivals would want to ditch the current Formula 1 power units after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[10968,64,63,2065,817,3875,945,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-696444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-10968","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canada","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\/696444","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=696444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/xpb_1411813_hires.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Antonelli](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/xpb_1411789_hires.jpg\")
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