George Russell has explained that getting used to the characteristics of Mercedes\u2019 2026 challenger is akin to \u201ca golfer changing his swing\u201d, as the Briton has gradually uncovered why he has struggled to find a consistent rhythm.<\/p>\n
After enduring reliability troubles and a lack of performance relative to Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, who claimed a remarkable five wins in a row between China and Monaco, Russell<\/a> bounced back with victory at the Austrian Grand Prix<\/a> and has reduced his team mate\u2019s advantage to 25 points<\/a>.<\/p>\n His resurgence coincided with a run of misfortune for the Italian as car issues prevented him from scoring in two out of the three most recent Grands Prix, but Russell admitted that he\u2019s still learning how to feel comfortable in the car.<\/p>\n \u201cYou naturally evolve your driving style to suit what is needed,\u201d he said ahead of Round 10 at Spa-Francorchamps<\/a>. \u201cWhen I raced in Formula 4, Formula 3, Formula 2, F1 at Williams<\/a> and then the previous generation, my style suited what was needed for all of those cars.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year, we\u2019ve seen a lot of trends that my style isn\u2019t quite suiting what the power unit needs, what the tyres need, and we\u2019re just needing to adapt the set-up to something that I\u2019ve not really run before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s kind of forcing me to drive a bit more consciously rather than subconsciously, which is also a bit of a negative. I\u2019m hoping I\u2019m in a bit of a learning pit before I can then take advantage of those learnings.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess it\u2019s like a golfer changing his swing \u2013 it\u2019s probably going to take a small step backwards first, and then you relearn that new swing and it\u2019s better. That feels a little bit where I\u2019m at at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Russell has his sights set on the standings lead, especially with the summer break coming up shortly, he also conceded that Antonelli isn\u2019t his only rival in the title battle.<\/p>\n Ferrari<\/a> have consistently improved throughout the season and now have two victories of their own, with Lewis Hamilton<\/a> winning in Barcelona before Charles Leclerc<\/a> beat Russell to the top step at Silverstone \u2013 Hamilton is currently just seven points adrift of his fellow Briton.<\/p>\n Asked whether he believes Ferrari’s progress is circuit-specific, Russell replied: \u201cI think they are definitely a permanent threat. They\u2019ve been getting stronger and stronger throughout this season. It\u2019s been very impressive to see the quantity of upgrades they\u2019re bringing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe power unit for them at Silverstone looked much stronger than we\u2019ve seen earlier in the season, and we know they have a fantastic chassis and great reliability. I think they\u2019re going to be a real threat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has explained that getting used to the characteristics of Mercedes\u2019 2026 challenger is akin to \u201ca…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-806848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","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\/806848","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=806848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}