George Russell, Mercedes, Circuit of the Americas, 2025

George Russell admitted racing has become almost non-existent in Formula 1 as drivers cannot pass each other and grands prix are largely decided by qualifying and the start.

The Mercedes driver fell from fourth to sixth at the start and finished there, having been unable to gain on the cars ahead. He said afterwards he was boxed in behind Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc which allowed Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri to overtake him.

“I made a good start off the line but Max covered Lando,” Russell told the official Formula 1 channel, “I expected Lando to go to the outside to defend from Charles and he didn’t. I just got stuck behind him and overtaken by Lewis and Oscar so that was really frustrating.”

He said it was impossible to make any progress from there. “Right now in F1 it’s a race to turn one,” said Russell.

“There’s no tyre degradation. There are only three tenths between the quickest car and the slowest car in the top six and normally you need at least half a second [advantage] to overtake.

“So if I came out of turn one in P3, I’d have been on the podium today, but instead I came in P6 and I finished P6.”

Russell finished the sprint race in second place but faced tougher competition from the Ferrari drivers in the grand prix.

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“Ferrari qualified ninth and 10th in the sprint race,” he said. “If that was the main race, there might have been a lot of points to us, they might have had a bad weekend. As I said, it’s such fine margins.

“If I was 20 milliseconds quicker in qualifying yesterday, I’d have been on the front row and probably on course to finish second in the race. Qualifying is massive, turn one is massive and I don’t even remember the last two-stop race in F1 now. It’s just quite processional, unfortunately.”

The Mercedes driver won the preceding race in Singapore and believes the team will have two more chances for strong results before the end of the season.

“I think Qatar and Vegas realistically are our two best shots,” he said. “But again, it all just comes down to the lap in qualifying.

“If you do a really strong lap and you’re on the front row, you can hold the position and if you don’t… it’s going to be the same in Mexico, it is going to come down to Q3 and the race start.”

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