BARCELONA, Spain – George Russell has taken inspiration from documentaries on sporting greats Rafael Nadal and Ronaldinho to help not lose all hope about his crumbling Formula 1 title challenge.<\/p>\n
Russell, the preseason favourite and winner of the season\u2019s opening race, has slipped to third in the championship and is 68 points behind wonderkid teammate Kimi Antonelli after six events.<\/p>\n
Antonelli has won five races in a row and gained 50 points on Russell over the last two — Russell retired from lead of the Canadian Grand Prix with car trouble and then finished out of the points in Monaco.<\/p>\n
Russell said the gap to Antonelli means he approaches races like Sunday\u2019s Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix free of the usual pressure of a title fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been very tough, of course,\u201d Russell said on Thursday. \u201cBut when I\u2019ve sat down and thought about this season as a whole, if it was just a clean season, not a season that I had bad luck, but just a neutral season, I think I\u2019d have had three more podiums to my name and it would have been five out of six races on the podium, maybe a couple of wins, two out of three sprint race victories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think I\u2019m probably slightly behind Kimi in the standings [in that scenario], but the picture is totally different, and now I\u2019m just going to do every race to try and control the controllables. I can\u2019t do anything about the engine breaking down, I can\u2019t do anything about a bad safety car timing or this pit lane infringement situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is out of my control. Now the pressure feels off, too be honest. I\u2019m going to try and enjoy every race, not even think about a championship, it\u2019s so far out of reach right now. That is just going to enjoy the races and have fun, drive fast, and do what I know I\u2019m capable of doing, and I\u2019ve done that for my whole career in Formula 1. Yeah, that\u2019s what I\u2019m excited for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell said it has been easier to process his situation because of the amount of things outside of his control.<\/p>\n
Asked exactly how he\u2019s got his head around how quickly his season has unravelled, Russell admitted he has turned to streaming services to find good examples of how to bounce back from his current situation.<\/p>\n
– Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix 2026: Race start time, how to watch, full schedule, predictions- Max Verstappen: New engine change \u2018step in right direction\u2019- Can George Russell bounce back after Monaco struggles?<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery week I\u2019ll always talk with my performance psychologist, and I\u2019ve been doing that for six years now, so that isn\u2019t anything new,\u201d he said. But it\u2019s just always great to talk to somebody about what you\u2019re feeling, how you\u2019re going to overcome those emotions, and are the emotions you\u2019re feeling a true reflection of the performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was 60 points behind in the championship based on performance, I would have been in a substantially worse place than I am today. 60 points behind when 45 of those at least were out of my control…<\/p>\n
\u201cI recently watched the Rafa documentary and also the Ronaldinho documentary. Quite contrasting [people], I think! But two greats, and it\u2019s not plain sailing every tournament, every match, every season. Ronaldinho was a hero of mine. I didn\u2019t realise that he had so many years and matches and competitions of struggle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always only remember the highlights of all of these greats. Everybody goes through these moments, whether it\u2019s through personal performance, things out of their control, injury, whatever it is. Yeah, that\u2019s where we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell\u2019s \u2018no pressure\u2019 approach is similar to the mindset his old friend Lando Norris said he adopted last season after retiring from the Dutch Grand Prix, which gave then-title rival Oscar Piastri a 34 point lead with less than half the season to run.<\/p>\n
The Englishman went on to win the championship under that approach.<\/p>\n
Norris said time will tell if the same approach helps Russell out or not.<\/p>\n
When asked how important the fresh approach took for him after Zandvoort and how a similar one might benefit Russell, Norris said: \u201cIt certainly made a difference. Everyone thinks differently. I\u2019ve always put a lot of pressure on myself. I don\u2019t know if George puts pressure on himself or doesn\u2019t or feels it or not. I don\u2019t know what situation he was necessarily in now. He\u2019s also always been quite a confident guy at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas last year I went from not much confidence to, \u2018what have I got to lose now?\u2019 He\u2019s gone from feeling quite confident to maybe losing some of that confidence. Maybe now getting to that point, every driver has to find their own way of doing it. It\u2019s not one thing works for all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough to know exactly what you\u2019ve got to do in that situation. Do you put more pressure on yourself? Do you try and feel none of it? There\u2019s a lot of things to think about as soon as someone says you\u2019re a title contender and you\u2019re in that situation. He\u2019s also got a teammate that\u2019s doing a pretty unbelievable job.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably better than I would say most people are expecting in here. He\u2019s got pressure from having a very good teammate and someone that\u2019s challenging him incredibly well, not making any mistakes. And then you\u2019ve got your own challenge of just getting the most out of yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see this weekend. If he says he\u2019s going around with no pressure now, then we\u2019ll see if that helps him or not. Every driver has to find their own way, so we\u2019ll see what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain – George Russell has taken inspiration from documentaries on sporting greats Rafael Nadal and Ronaldinho to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2571,49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-730503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-auto-racing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730503","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=730503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}