Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has revealed George Russell "found it difficult to cope" with Kimi Antonelli's performances earlier this year. Russell went into 2026 as favourite for the Drivers' Championship but Antonelli stunned his team-mate by winning five consecutive races in the opening quarter of the season. Following an engine failure in May's Canadian Grand Prix, Russell was only on the podium twice until the August summer break but has been much stronger in recent races, underlined by his lights-to-flag victory last time out in Baku.
That win cut Russell's championship deficit to 66 points to Antonelli ahead of this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. In a wide-ranging interview with Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle, which airs on Sunday morning ahead of lights out at 8am in Malaysia, Wolff says Russell was in "rocket mode" in Azerbaijan but has faced tough moments at times this year. He's someone that's very emotional in a different way to an Italian driver as an example.
They've all been different, the drivers that we had in the team," said Wolff. "He gets down and it's difficult to cope, particularly when you have a 19-year-old coming into the team and it looks so easy. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "Kimi is a natural that is able to capture an audience and then this is the season you have to deliver [if you are Russell] - you are the candidate for winning the championship.
"Suddenly things are different. Your team-mate is so competitive, which you kind of, rationally get but it came as a surprise how competitive he was. "I think George is in a place where that is the situation.
He has a 20-year-old teammate that is one of the best rookies that has ever been. "He needs to fight him to beat him. I think he has now settled into this reality of 'this is going to be really hard because he's so good'.
That I think we kind of figured out together." A Mercedes driver will almost certainly win the Drivers' Championship for the first time since Lewis Hamilton's record-equalling seventh world title in 2020. Wolff says both Russell and Antonelli have needed his support over the last two years but his experience of handling the challenging dynamic between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg between 2013 and 2016 helps him now. "I'm 10 years older with 10 years more experience, with a different line-up.
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