{"id":371799,"date":"2025-12-27T18:13:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T18:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/371799\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T18:13:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T18:13:56","slug":"george-russell-manages-tricky-mercedes-to-become-best-of-the-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/371799\/","title":{"rendered":"George Russell manages tricky Mercedes to become best of the rest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1\u2019s ground effect era has not provided happy hunting grounds for Mercedes<\/a>, and the team\u2019s drop in form compared to the previous ruleset is well-documented. Sadly, for George Russell<\/a>, the dramatic shift came as he made the move from Williams<\/a> to Mercedes.<\/p>\n

Russell joined Mercedes in 2022 and in the ensuing years, has grown and developed in the shadow of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton<\/a>. This season, he finally stepped out into the limelight as the team leader \u2013 despite another rocky season for the Silver Arrows.<\/p>\n

The year got off to a strong start for Russell, who picked up back-to-back podiums with third in Australia and China to kick off the season strongly. This was followed in Bahrain, where the Brit finished second, and Miami where he picked up another third place.<\/p>\n

His run of top-five finishes came to an end at Imola, however, as Mercedes rolled out new suspension components that did more harm than good. Correlation issues hid a flaw in the new components, which Mercedes used over four race weekends including Monaco – Russell scored his only finish outside the top 10 of the year with 11th. However, the upgrade wasn’t the sole culprit here, as the Brit was also handed a drive-through penalty for passing Alex Albon<\/a> off track.<\/p>\n

Russell was able to drive his way around the flaw, however, and took fourth at the following race in Spain before picking up his first win of the year in Canada \u2013 leading a double-podium for Mercedes as rookie team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> finished third.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

“Everything went wrong” for George Russell in Silverstone<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The topsy-turvy nature of Russell\u2019s season quickly returnedt, and a penalty for an unsafe release hit his Austrian GP, before poor strategy calls in Silverstone saw the Brit finish 10th \u2013 a result he says came because \u201ceverything went wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our position, if you play it safe, you’ll come home with a safe result,\u201d Russell lamented after the Silverstone race. \u201cOf course, that would have probably been P4. Standing here now, do I wish I had P4? Of course. We wanted to be bold, we wanted to be brave. We went for some bold decisions and ultimately it bit us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second half of the season proved to be more consistent for Russell and Mercedes, which had now ditched its updated suspension design. After the summer break, Russell picked up a further three podiums as well as a second win of the year in Singapore \u2013 where he qualified on pole and led from the line.<\/p>\n

The dominance proved to be unexpected for Mercedes and Russell, who admitted after the race \u201cif I were to make a list of all the races I thought we could win at this year, this would probably be right at the bottom\u201d.<\/p>\n

Top three finishes followed in the US, Brazil and Qatar sprints, which helped Mercedes secure second place in the constructors\u2019 standings. The effort didn\u2019t all fall on Russell\u2019s shoulders, however, as team-mate Antonelli racked up 150 points in his first season \u2013 despite having his fair share of wobbles over his rookie year.<\/p>\n

Russell, however, showed his experience over the course of 2025 to collect more than double Antonelli\u2019s tally with 319 points by the end of the year. He also wiped the floor with Antonelli in the qualifying head-to-head, finishing 25-5 in grand prix qualifyings.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1\u2019s ground effect era has not provided happy hunting grounds for Mercedes, and the team\u2019s drop in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,158931,576,577,3024,1881,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-371799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-f1-2025-recap-george-russell-manages-tricky-mercedes-to-become-best-of-the-rest","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-george-russell","15":"tag-mercedes","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}