Ppl keep sayin 63s are overreacting. Let’s go through his 2026 season then. And we’re only 16 races in.
China. Front wing issue in Q2. Anti-stall in Q3. Car got stuck in first gear. Steering wheel change, system resets then his final lap with cold tyres and barely any battery.
Japan. Mercedes pits George. SC comes out literally a lap later. Kimi gets the cheap stop and wins. Massive championship swing.
Canada. George is leading the race. Battery fails. DNF. Kimi wins. 25 points gone.
Monaco. George gets a 5-second penalty after a pit limiter software issue, even though he did everything right. Mercedes serves the penalty incorrectly. He goes from a likely P3 to zero points
Barcelona. George asks for more front wing at his pit stop. Mercedes adjusts it incorrectly. He loses around 0.7s a lap in the final stint.
Silverstone/Spa. Straight-line speed issues Mercedes can’t figure out why and blame his driving style. Turns out it was a software problem draining electrical energy too early.
Spa. The deployment issue at the start. George DNFs. Mercedes later admits the problem was on them.
Hungary. A water leak in quali. Anti-stall at the start of the race. George drops from P6 to P21 before Turn 1.
Zandvoort. Mercedes gives Kimi fresher tyres, then George gets told to give up P2 and not fight him.
Madrid. Kimi stays on the one-stop and wins. George gets put on two stops and finishes P5.
Monza. Another split strategy. Kimi gets the VSC stop and fresh tyres. George stays out. Kimi wins after took his first PU penalty at one of the easiest tracks on the calendar to recover positions.
And all of this while George was running the oldest, highest-mileage PU on the grid, the same one he’d been using since Hungary.
Sepang. George is running P3 with five laps to go and the PU fails. Another podium gone. Zero points. And now we find out Mercedes had deliberately kept piling mileage onto that PU as a long-term reliability exercise, with the data also feeding into 2027 development. It eventually failed during George’s actual title fight.
And then there’s the PR side of it.
George gets a grand slam in Baku and Toto follows it up by publicly talking about how difficult George found Kimi’s competitiveness earlier in the season.
Fans have also spent the whole season pointing out the difference in how Mercedes markets the two drivers, including the mess around George’s 100th Mercedes GP and how little he appeared in some of the team’s own content before they got called out for it.
It’s months of this shit piling up
🚨 Mercedes reportedly KNEW George Russell’s engine was being pushed to its limit.
The power unit that failed in Malaysia had been in use since Hungary and Mercedes deliberately kept it running as part of a long-term reliability test for its 2027 development.
The downside? Russell has effectively paid the price.
Singapore is a terrible place to take a fresh engine penalty, meaning Mercedes may either risk an older unit again or wait until Austin and send George to the back of the grid.
(via.
@Formula1WM)
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