Max also pointed at\u00a0Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> jumping in the Racing Bulls<\/a> at Zandvoort and being competitive straight away, with zero prior experience of the 2026 cars. But then Yuki negated the point, after a fashion, by making a mess of things at Monza, forgetting to activate Straightline Mode at various points during practice and qualifying.<\/p>\n And yet there are enough peculiarities to suggest there is substance to the theory when comparing Russell to his\u00a0Mercedes<\/a> team-mate Kimi Antonelli<\/a> in the world championship battle, along with the McLaren<\/a> duo of Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a>. Mercedes and McLaren bigwigs have lent their weight to the theory, although cynics could of course cite the Mandy Rice-Davies principle: \u201cWell they would say that, wouldn\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n In Spain, in between fielding questions about the track designers\u2019 inability to understand how to conjure a layout conducive to overtaking, Russell returned to the theme of trying to understand where and why\u00a0Antonelli has been faster than him.<\/p>\n \u201cI do have an answer and I’m working on it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think it’s been much improved. So I’m very pleased with the step I’ve taken because fundamentally changing the driving style, I think, is achievable for a lot of drivers. But then actually being fast with it is another topic.<\/p>\n Russell has a theory of why he is being outperformed by Antonelli – and there being a similar story elsewhere on the grid<\/p>\n Photo by: Steven Tee \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I feel my performance since the summer break has been\u2026 I’ve qualified ahead of him in the three qualifying sessions. And my race pace has been on a par with him in these two races. And I couldn’t say that pre-break.\u00a0So, as I said, I’m definitely very pleased with that progression. We’ll have to see where the rest of the season takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n The issue of disparities in electrical deployment between team-mates is at its most pronounced at tracks with long straights, since the driver with the lower state of charge either receives a lower quantity of electrical boost down the straight, equating to a lower peak speed, or enters the so-called ramp-down phase (colloquially referred to as \u2018the staircase\u2019) earlier. Achieving the \u2018optimal lap\u2019 targeted by the engineers requires a counter-intuitive dance with the controls: it isn\u2019t necessarily just a case of sliding less here or there, the driver also has to hit their marks in terms of throttle position.<\/p>\n All this rehearsal has to be done in the simulator because the days of unlimited track testing are long in the past.<\/p>\n “My driving style is good because I’m able to adapt better. I don’t think it’s one style that works” Lando Norris<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like, in a game of football, if you’re struggling with something, they tell you that you can’t go to the training pitch until the day before the match\u2026 and you’ve got two one-hour sessions to try and totally change something and improve upon it,\u201d said Russell.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it has been difficult. Using the practice sessions as an opportunity to trial things and even in the races themselves having to try things in the races, working on those techniques. That is just the challenge of Formula 1.\u00a0And it has been a strange season when you look at the competitiveness of\u00a0Piastri against Lando last year, Charles [Leclerc] versus Lewis [Hamilton] \u2013 and even the dominance of Max against all of his team-mates in the previous era. This year, myself, Charles, Oscar are struggling much more compared to our team-mates.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Max \u2013 his team-mates have been substantially closer to him than anybody has in the past six years. Kimi, Lewis, Lando have also got quite similar driving styles. So, to me, it’s pretty clear with this car, with these tyres, what I need to achieve. And the trends are there with those four drivers who I just mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n Limited testing opportunities have left Russell with fewer chances to adapt to the new F1 cars<\/p>\n Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n Norris has poo-pooed that theory earlier this season and he was happy to do so again.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly I wouldn’t really say my driving style suits this car,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI think my driving style is good because I’m able to adapt better. I don’t think it’s one style that works. I don’t think I drive the same way as\u00a0Kimi. I’ve obviously never had him as a team-mate or Lewis, so I have no idea. He [Hamilton] can probably paint a better picture. He’s also not been my team-mate, so I don’t think he can speak from knowledge of that. But my driving style doesn’t suit this car.<\/p>\n \u201cMy adaptability is what allows me to drive the car I’ve got. I think my strength is my adaptability to different driving styles.\u00a0It wasn’t necessarily the best thing that I had for me last year. I think last year the beginning suited Oscar a little bit more. My strength was being able to adapt better to then finally understand how to drive it in a better way. Hence then I started to have a better second half of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the same thing with this year. You don’t drive this car anywhere close to last year. Not even 1% I feel is remotely the same. So I think it’s incorrect to say my driving style just suits it. My ability to adapt better I think is what’s my strength.\u201d<\/p>\n Although he is teetering on the brink of contradicting himself here, Norris makes a very good point about adaptability. The 2026 cars do require very counter-intuitive approach, from the absurd restrictions surrounding throttle position to the way they often penalise going around corners faster. It was a wall many drivers banged their heads against earlier in the season before realising that the most productive outcome lay in working with the cars\u2019 limitations rather than complaining about them.<\/p>\n Russell enjoyed a cushion at the beginning of the season based on having more frontline F1 experience than Antonelli, and a much faster car than anyone else. But as car performance has converged and Antonelli has thrown himself into mastering the cars, Russell has had to work harder.<\/p>\n After the Italian Grand Prix, where Antonelli humbled Russell from 19th on the grid \u2013 albeit with some help from a usefully timed virtual safety car deployment, a feature that repeated to aid Antonelli’s win in Sunday’s Spanish GP \u2013 team boss Toto Wolff likened Kimi to an AI agent, constantly learning. There is a way to drive these cars quickly: it\u2019s ugly, but you just have to learn how.<\/p>\n Read Also:<\/p>\n Has Antonelli just adapted or learned quicker than Russell?<\/p>\n Photo by: Clive Mason \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n For his part, Norris does have a different style to Russell \u2013 he takes a shallower approach to the apex, overlaps throttle and brake more, and uses the point where the lateral grip of the front tyres peaks to help rotate the car. If he doesn\u2019t trust the rear end of the car to behave, and the front end isn\u2019t communicative enough about the state of the grip, Norris is nowhere \u2013 as in Bahrain last season, for instance. But if he has those prerequisites underneath him, he can adapt his cornering trajectory and brake-throttle overlap to suit.<\/p>\n What changed the game for Norris back then was\u00a0McLaren\u2019s development of an alternative front suspension geometry that traded some theoretical performance for greater \u2018feel\u2019. In combination with his ability to adapt, this more than compensated for the aerodynamic cost of the alternative front end giving less anti-dive.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true that there are commonalities between Russell\u2019s and\u00a0Piastri\u2019s styles. They have a greater separation of braking and steering, less overlap of brake and throttle; fundamentally they are ordering the car to do their bidding rather than working with it. Several drivers, including those whose job it is to spend hours in the sim refining the models, reckon that approach is tougher to adapt to the peculiarities of the 2026 cars.<\/p>\n “The drivers who can also look at that very objectively and have the openness, and also to be able to say, \u2018OK, this was my error, this actually wasn’t the car, this is something that I did, what can I do next time so that this isn’t happening,\u2019 that is the right mindset” Elina Haukipuro<\/p>\n So citing driving style may not be the excuse many believe it to be. It\u2019s also a key marker of psychology, and very indicative of the different states of mind up and down the grid.<\/p>\n Elite performance coach and former Mercedes team doctor\u00a0Elina Haukipuro talks about the need for drivers to avoid a \u201cnegative spiral\u201d as they mentally process defeats. Often the easiest way is to blame the car, but they can also begin to question their own abilities \u2013 as Russell did around his mid-season slump this season, and Norris did in the early rounds of 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving that negative thought that just carries with you from one race to the next is really, really bad for the concentration, for the focus, for the performance,\u201d\u00a0Haukipuro told Autosport.<\/p>\n Perfecting the mental side of F1 is also just as important as the best driving style<\/p>\n Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cBecause the drivers that do perform the best in cases like this, especially when they’ve had a difficult race or a couple of races, are the ones who are able to let go of that and focus on the current situation, focusing on the race itself, and focusing on that race specifically, and not carrying the weight of the whole season on their shoulders. As soon as we’re starting to think of, OK, where am I in the points, who’s in front of me, what is going to happen if I perform like this, you’re already putting way too much attention on other things than the race itself.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to be able to kind of distinguish or detach the results from your entire identity, let alone self-worth, because even if your entire world or majority of it is revolving around racing, that can’t be everything that you stand for. So having the ability to see that, to have the trust in your skills, being able to, in a more neutral way, analyse something that has happened, or even accepting it.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018This is what has happened, I made a mistake, what are we learning from it, why is it happening.\u2019 We go through a lot of understanding of why something happens \u2013 I always say that everything comes out of something, there’s always an explanation for why you react a certain way, why something has happened during a race.<\/p>\n \u201cEspecially in F1, we have so much data. The drivers who can also look at that very objectively and have the openness, and also to be able to say, \u2018OK, this was my error, this actually wasn’t the car, this is something that I did, what can I do next time so that this isn’t happening,\u2019 and not push the blame on something else, that is the right mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n If the current F1 season has taught us anything, then, it\u2019s that the drivers who adapt best will thrive.<\/p>\n Is Antonelli simply nailing adaptability and mental requirements for F1 2026?<\/p>\n Photo by: Sam Bagnall \/ Sutton Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n We want to hear from you!<\/p>\n Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.<\/p>\n![\"Russell](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/andrea-kimi-antonelli-mercedes.jpg\")
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