George Russell has released his first public comments since Kimi Antonelli claimed the Formula 1 drivers’ title in Mexico City.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After the Italian finished third to become the youngest F1 champion, Russell quickly left the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez without talking to the media, something which earned Mercedes a \u20ac5,000 fine.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Russell had finished sixth after incurring a 10-second time penalty for a collision on the opening lap with Isack Hadjar after starting on the front-row – but where a deployment issue on the run to Turn 1 had dropped him down the order.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Post-race, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff labelled the result as a “catastrophic moment” for the Briton, who was “distraught.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Now, nearly 24 hours after the end of the race, Russell has taken to social media.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In a lengthy statement on Instagram, Russell described how his season had “quickly unravelled” after a dominant pole and win in the season-opener in Australia – as he vowed to “rediscover the performance I’ve been capable of producing for the majority of my career.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
[Read the full statement below]\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tGeorge Russell statement in full<\/p>\n
“Now feels like a pretty suitable moment to speak from the heart.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“This season started off exactly how I had hoped but it very quickly unravelled with tough luck and poor performances.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been the first proper season of my career where I\u2019ve had more bad days than good. Has it been tough to deal with? Yes, very.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Has it been tough to pick myself up week in, week out? Yes, very. Confusion at times? Often. All I know is that I\u2019ve given it my all and 2026 was not meant to be my year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want to sincerely congratulate Kimi on what has been an absolutely incredible season. You truly deserve the Championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Thank you to the team for producing the best car and power unit this season; it\u2019s been inspiring to see everyone coming together over four tough years to bring Mercedes back to the top.<\/p>\n
“Now, all I can promise is that for the rest of this season, and into the next one, I will be giving my absolute all to rediscover the performance I have been capable of producing for the majority of my career and fingers crossed a little bit of luck returns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Thanks for all the support.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has released his first public comments since Kimi Antonelli claimed the Formula 1 drivers’ title in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":["post-950325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950325","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=950325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}