At the start of the 2026 season, George Russell was tipped as the clear favourite to win the world championship. With nine races still to go according to the official calendar, the Briton now trails his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli by 81 points. Former Silver Arrow driver Nico Rosberg, who knows all too well about internal rivalries from his time at Mercedes, explains what the situation is like for Russell.<\/p>\n
Speaking in his capacity as a Sky pundit, Rosberg said: \u201cI\u2019m very impressed by George, because he really is a perfectionist and tries to optimise every single aspect of his performance. I know he\u2019s working on his mental state. He meditates, he does everything he can, and I really admire that. But it\u2019s all the harder for him because he doesn\u2019t understand himself.\u201d Excuse me?<\/p>\n
You start to doubt yourself<\/p>\n
Rosberg explains the Briton\u2019s situation: \u201cHe\u2019s always been quick. He was always at least on a par with his team-mate, and suddenly he\u2019s lost that, and that\u2019s really painful because you start to doubt yourself.\u201d Russell had started the 2026 season as the clear favourite and even won the opening race. But then his team-mate, who was just 19 at the start of the season, overtook him.<\/p>\n
Rosberg: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how confident you are. Then that thought creeps in: Am I not good enough, or was I better before and am I just doing something wrong now?\u201d The 2016 world champion: \u201cThat\u2019s really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of the 2026 season, George Russell was tipped as the clear favourite to win the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-898216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898216","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=898216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}