Following a frustrating 2026 F1 Japanese GP for Mercedes‘ George Russell, Team Principal Toto Wolff explained the factors behind his toughest race weekend of the season so far.
Despite topping FP1, Russell’s weekend began to unravel on Saturday. Slower than his Italian stablemate in FP3, Mercedes made a set-up change ahead of qualifying to try and get the car in an optimum place.
However, the change proved worse, as Russell later admitted: “The car just did not feel the same as it has been the whole weekend.”
He ultimately lost out on pole position to his teammate Kimi Antonelli by 0.298 seconds, settling for P2. Throughout the qualifying hour, he complained about the balance and was visibly fighting the rear end of his W17.
Russell endured a difficult race start on Sunday, dropping down to P4 by Turn 2. However, he quickly recovered and made his way up to the race lead on lap 15 when Oscar Piastri boxed, before pitting on lap 22 himself. He headed back out on track in P5.
But moments later, race control deployed a safety car for Ollie Bearman’s big crash, allowing Antonelli to pit with ease and retain P1, while Russell was P3.
He ultimately finished P4. On the restart he was passed by Lewis Hamilton.
Wolff on Russell’s bad luck at the Japanese GP
Reflecting on George Russell’s tough 2026 F1 Japanese GP that saw him finish just outside the podium for the first time this season, Toto Wolff shared:
“No, I think the race went against him starting with the qualifying set-up decisions. With a set-up decision that put the car in a spot that was, literally from FP3 to qualifying, much worse.
“And then, the start, certainly we don’t give the two drivers the best of tools for the start, but then it was also driver mistakes today on the start. And then, we had to make the call for the safety car because we were risking the position to [Charles] Leclerc, and that, then luck fell on to Kimi’s side, who was very quick at that stage, and bad luck for George that he lost his position there.”
This marks Antonelli’s second win of the 2026 season, making him the youngest-ever driver to lead the Drivers’ Championship standings, 9 points clear of Russell, who dropped to P2.
As for what happened on the run to Spoon that saw car #63 slow and lose a spot to Charles Leclerc, a software glitch that led to the dreaded super clipping was the cause of that dropped position.
Nonetheless, he recovered to pass Lewis Hamilton and take P4, although he just fell short of getting the Monegasque at the end. He had passed Leclerc at the chicane with four tours remaining, but the Ferrari driver responded immediately on the run to turn 1.
“And then, on top of that, we had a software glitch that gave him a super clip and got overtaken by Leclerc. So, this is literally everything that went wrong for him in the last 24 hours,” Wolff concluded.
