Why this looks like Russell’s best chance yet at the British GP

On paper this is George Russell’s best chance yet to improve on his best grand prix result at Silverstone, the fifth place he recorded in 2023. But you can never quite count on racing here running to form: Mercedes may have the most competitive car this season, but in last year’s British Grand Prix it missed the podium entirely for the first time since 2012 – and this was against a background of improving performances through F1’s latest ground-effect era.

Russell won the opening round of this season in Australia, seemingly cementing his status as the bookies’ favourite to win the 2026 world championship. But until his victory in the Austrian GP his progress had been rockier, and Russell’s team-mate Kimi Antonelli has staked out a significant points lead after a string of victories. That run included a mightily impressive win on the streets of Monte Carlo in which he put a lap on Russell, though there were mitigating circumstances for this.

Russell has pointed towards the Mercedes’ boots as the source of his wobble relative to Antonelli, saying: “The difference is how we’re driving has such an impact on the tyres – he’s just getting the tyres in a nicer window than me.” He has also referenced “something in my driving style that’s not helping the car at the moment”.

“I think there’s clearly a difference in driving style between the two of us, which has been there last year as well, but played into my hands very well last year,” continues Russell. “And it clearly is playing into his hands perfectly well this year, but it still doesn’t answer why I was so good at the start of the year and so poor now. So we need to look at why that is. It’s clear in the data.”

Given the key issue has been one of getting temperature into the tyres at the crucial point, ahead of a qualifying lap, it would be tempting to say Antonelli’s more harum-scarum style is the big point of difference, and is obviously working better.

Tempting, yes, but a huge oversimplification and not quite accurate. Antonelli is aggressive, and noticeably busier with his control inputs, but he’s also remarkably neat while doing so – as evinced by the delightful fluency and precision of his Monaco pole lap, during which he wasn’t actually fastest in any of the sectors.

Russell, by contrast, is more of a classically smooth driver who gets their braking effort in earlier while bleeding off as little speed as possible, aiming to carry that pace through the corner. As a consequence his peak tyre loadings are higher than Antonelli’s, especially at the rear, and this can produce an imbalance of temperatures across the axles.

Australian GP victory turned out to be a bit of a false dawn for the pre-season title favourite

Photo by: Anni Graf - Formula 1 via Getty Images

It’s a characteristic of this year’s Pirellis that warm-up is often harder, given their greater resistance to thermal degradation, and when the fronts aren’t up to temperature they offer much less feel and grip during the turn-in phase of cornering. If Russell doesn’t have confidence here then he can’t quite commit to carrying a lot of speed through the corner.

Comparisons between Antonelli and Russell are complicated by the huge changes for 2026. Beyond the hotly debated issue of the new power units and the near-50/50 split of electrical energy to internal combustion power, the chassis has migrated back from generating downforce via the underfloor to a more conventional arrangement, as well as being narrower overall. The wheels and tyres, too, are narrower.

Where the ground-effect cars were heavy, and stiffly sprung to prevent the body lifting and compromising the underfloor airflow, the 2026 chassis generate far less downforce while generally running higher ride heights. Some cars also run quite aggressive rake angles, though not as steep as in the peak of the pre-2022 era.

Even when he’s been outpaced by Antonelli, generally the margins have been small – and he was strong enough in the low-grip conditions of Montreal to beat his team-mate to pole position

“I’ve been driving in this manner my whole career,” says Russell. “And now for whatever reason, it’s not working with this car. Last year’s car, Kimi was trying to drive in my way and it was also not working for him. So it’s no excuse. It’s just a reality. And I need to either work with the team to adjust my driving to compensate for these new tyres, these new cars. Or I need to find a different set-up that works for me. But it’s not clicking right now.”

Antonelli’s busier driving style also equips him better for low-grip tracks where the car experiences small slides, and the fastest way around is to live with them and correct them rather than trying to avoid them entirely. Here Russell is aligned with Oscar Piastri, whose 2025 championship challenge evaporated over a series of low-grip venues in the second half of the year.

While the bellowing buffoons of social media claimed this was a McLaren stitch-up to favour Lando Norris, it was a genuine process of leaving lap time on the table by trying to prevent these tiny slides.

What Piastri sought to do over the off-season into 2026 is make small adjustments to his approach rather than a complete overhaul, and this is the approach Russell needs to take. Even when he’s been outpaced by Antonelli, generally the margins have been small – and he was strong enough in the low-grip conditions of Montreal to beat his team-mate to pole position.

The Mercedes drivers’ battles got intense in both the sprint and grand prix in Canada

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

The worst approach he can take is to follow Piastri’s initial response to those mid-season travails last year – allowing himself to become convinced that his team-mate is being given preferential treatment and that the car has baked-in characteristics that don’t suit him.

It’s also fair to point out that Russell’s slippage compared with Antonelli in the opening quarter-season has owed something to bad luck. In Japan he pitted from the lead just as an accident unfolded between Ollie Bearman and Franco Colapinto, which required a safety car deployment, and Antonelli emerged as the beneficiary of that. In Montreal he suffered a power unit failure while leading, and in Monaco a podium was possible but for the snafu that resulted in Russell serving a drive-through penalty just after the restart.

The championship picture is complicated by the ongoing effects of the conflict in the Middle East, which resulted in the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs being “postponed”, in effect putting the F1 season on pause throughout April. Not only was this momentum-sapping for the drivers, but it also meant there was no certainty over how many races there may ultimately be this season.

The commercial rights holder is currently up to its neck in contingency plans: there’s hope that one race, most likely Bahrain, could slot into the gap between Singapore and Azerbaijan. But, equally, F1 is having to allow for the possibility of the conflict rumbling on, which will make Azerbaijan problematic and the Qatar and Abu Dhabi GPs untenable.

“I want to get racing now,” said Russell after Monaco. “The season has been disjointed. I still very much believe in myself and know what I can do. I think we’re not even 30% of the way through, but there’s a lot of points down the drain. It’s not been very enjoyable.

“I’m in a very weird state of mind because I’ve had very low moments in my career where I’ve maybe had a run of two bad races or three bad races on my own personal performance. I’ve never had a run of bad luck as such like this.”

Obviously Russell will enjoy a life in front of his home crowd at Silverstone, but there are plenty of intriguing unknowns. Given this track’s demanding nature, the hardest three tyre compounds will feature for the first time since Japan in late March.

Wolff, who had to step in for Monaco podium duty, talks of “mixed feelings”

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

This, of course, assumes dry weather, which is by no means a given on this windy old airfield with its peculiar microclimate. The past two British GPs have been disrupted by wet conditions and this could be the first properly rain-affected race of the year.

This has a greater significance than it would in other years because the latest generation of wet-weather tyres is unproven, so there are doubts about how readily the intermediates can be brought up to operating temperature. On top of this there are the usual reservations concerning the ‘full wets’, which are rarely used since a red flag is generally in the offing when conditions get so bad as to require them.

So it’s up to Russell to shape his own destiny and make the most of what opportunities come his way. Fortunately for him, he has a team principal who is well used to managing a championship fight under one garage roof. Toto Wolff had to juggle the ebb and flow of emotions as Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg duelled for the title – a saga in which both drivers at some point came to believe that their own team was working against them.

“Luck swings in your direction, and sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s not a question of not knowing how to drive, it’s about having a car underneath that you feel confident with, and that you can go fast” Toto Wolff

“I’ll give you an example,” says Wolff. “I haven’t gone to a podium for 10 years, because it’s always difficult to balance between one side of the garage being happy and the other not.

“[In Monaco] I couldn’t avoid it because the board member that I wanted to go said he needed to catch a flight. And then the team said, ‘You’ve got to go’. And while standing there, I’m always with mixed feelings. The Montreal race was his [Russell’s] to win, we let him down. I’ve talked to him… this is a long championship.

“Luck swings in your direction, and then sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s not a question of not knowing how to drive, it’s about having a car underneath that you feel confident with, and that you can go fast. And that’s a fact.

“Formula 1 is about physics and not mystics. You don’t unlearn how to drive. I’m not stressed at all for his performances, because we know he’s one of the best.”

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the August 2026 issue and subscribe today.

The King’s Lynn native’s highest British GP finishing position so far is fifth in 2023

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images