2026 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

[Lasssept]

[AR3-GP]

The W16 never had tire deg problems. It was Russell's own limitations. 43 seconds behind your teammate. Had Antonelli crashed out on lap 1 people would be saying the W17 is ****.

[Matt2725]

Hyperbolic comments that are demonstrably untrue, such as the one above, aside, George does need to improve, as it isn't good enough on his part.

[Emag]

Agreed on some level, as I personally have never had any big praise for George, but I also don't rate him lowly so I can't say I am not surprised at these performances. He's just completely disappeared since Australia. The car is definitely still the benchmark, Kimi has showed it, but George has lost the plot it seems. Happened to Lando last year as well at the first half of the season, but nowhere near to this extent.

[AR3-GP]

Agreed on some level, as I personally have never had any big praise for George, but I also don't rate him lowly so I can't say I am not surprised at these performances. He's just completely disappeared since Australia. The car is definitely still the benchmark, Kimi has showed it, but George has lost the plot it seems. Happened to Lando last year as well at the first half of the season, but nowhere near to this extent.

Lando has never in his life been belted by a teammate to the tune of 43 seconds, or gotten caught from the back of the grid by a teammate. Not the same thing. Lando had always been good at managing tires and always had good race pace. The same can't be said in Russell's history. So this isn't surprising. Russell's performances last year were flatted by Antonelli's inexperience, and before then by Hamilton's age.

[Matt2725]

So if George goes and wins the next 4 races in a row, I assume it'll be because Merc sabotaged Kimi's car, according to these comments.

[basti313]

Lando had always been good at managing tires and always had good race pace. The same can't be said in Russell's history. So this isn't surprising. Russell's performances last year were flatted by Antonelli's inexperience, and before then by Hamilton's age.

Well, what can be said to three out of four drivers here is, that a dutch guy likes to give them heavy driving lessons when they try to overtake him.

[Lasssept]

[zibby43]

Ol' LEC's comments about Kimi's wheel-to-wheel abilities aged like milk today.

[Lasssept]

Andrew Shovlin: Congratulations to Kimi on his third win of the season and the whole team on our fourth to start this campaign. After a tough Friday, everyone has rallied together to bounce back, and it is testament to those efforts that we come away from Miami with another P1 trophy. It was certainly a hard-fought win; strategically, the team made the right decisions and with some swift work in the pit lane, that helped Kimi get ahead of Norris and George ahead of Leclerc. Kimi showed good pace to keep the McLaren at bay and take a well-deserved win.

For George, whilst he has said that he underperformed this weekend, we will work hard in the coming days to understand why we weren’t able to get his car into a better window for him. We know that George has much more pace than he was able to show here in Miami and he will come back stronger in Canada.

Coming into this weekend, we knew that our competitors would close the gap to us, but it has been eye-opening to see just how much performance they were able to bring. We now have two weeks before we head to Canada, and we will be redoubling our efforts to head there with a chance of making it five wins in-a-row to start 2026.

[Lasssept]

George Russell has revealed that he adjusted his car’s settings to mirror those of team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the closing stages of the Miami Grand Prix.

After the changes, Russell found extra pace and closed in on Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, who were battling ahead.

“It was a difficult race,” Russell told Sky F1. “It felt okay, to be honest, those early laps in the fight.”

“The hard tyre was just nowhere. I got some ideas, the last 10 laps were much more competitive, I made some quite big changes with my differentials and my brake bias.

“It was much closer to what Kimi has been running this whole weekend, which made a bigger impact than I thought.

“But still not a good weekend. I know this place is always a real tough one for me.”

link

[Matt2725]

I still don't get why they didn't move towards what was clearly the better setup after the sprint.

Either way, based upon performance changes last season and how it's gone this year thus far, GR should have a fairly solid run of performance up to and including COTA/Mexico now, if he really hasn't forgot how to drive.

Brazil is the next track on the schedule he has previously struggled at.

[Jdn1327]

George Russell has revealed that he adjusted his car’s settings to mirror those of team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the closing stages of the Miami Grand Prix.

After the changes, Russell found extra pace and closed in on Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, who were battling ahead.

“It was a difficult race,” Russell told Sky F1. “It felt okay, to be honest, those early laps in the fight.”

“The hard tyre was just nowhere. I got some ideas, the last 10 laps were much more competitive, I made some quite big changes with my differentials and my brake bias.

“It was much closer to what Kimi has been running this whole weekend, which made a bigger impact than I thought.

“But still not a good weekend. I know this place is always a real tough one for me.”

link

I think George is over thinking things. He just needs to calm down. Be that same George that beat Hamilton easily. Although taking nothing away from kimi, he is the real deal

[Big Tea]

I don't think George likes the way you have to think about these cars. They do not seem instinctive to drive ( Never tried one, obviously lol ) but instinct seems to have the lesser effect, on recharging that is.

[Rootsap]

Or maybe it's pride that stands in his way, refusing to adopt the settings of a youngster because "what does he know"