Mercedes had a disappointing F1 Mexico City GP as Kimi Antonelli and George Russell finished P6 and P7 on Sunday afternoon.
Alongside a general lack of pace, George Russell was fired up on the radio through the day. A lack of team orders, or the failure to do it quicker, irked the two-time race winner in 2025.
Bradley Lord on team orders between the Mercedes drivers at the F1 Mexico City GP
Antonelli got ahead of Russell out of turn 5 after the madness that ensued following Verstappen and Hamilton battling in turns 1, 2 and 4 at the start of lap 6. Car #63 got shuffled wide as the Dutch driver tried to hold position, with the Italian taking advantage of it.
Initially bottled up behind Verstappen who could not pass the brilliant Bearman, both would end up chasing the Haas driver for the rest of the race. They failed to get him.
During the medium stint, Russell started to call for a swap at the halfway stage of the race. He felt he had more pace. Eventually it happened on lap 41, although Antonelli was not particularly happy about it.
In the end the British driver did not have much more pace, struggling to catch Bearman in that stint. After Piastri passed him following the second round of stops, he gave P6 back to his Italian teammate.
In a print media session after the F1 Mexico City GP, Mercedes’ Chief Communications Officer and Team Representative Bradley Lord discussed it.
“Yeah, it’s always marginal. It’s always a delicate situation to handle.
“And obviously when you’re chasing a car in front but struggling to make progress, actually looking after the tyres, the car behind is obviously sliding around, overheating tyres, pressure coming from behind as well, from a faster car, ultimately, on the day. It makes it delicate.
“We’ll have to review it, see was it the right thing, should we have done it a little bit sooner. All of that will come out in the wash of the analysis overnight [Sunday] and then tomorrow [Monday].”
Toto Wolff has the final call
Although he was not at the F1 Mexico City GP, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has the power in his hands on such decisions like team orders.
Nonetheless, with the likes of James Allison and Andrew Shovlin on the pit wall, there is plenty of highly regarded senior people at the track to be involved in the call.
“The ultimate call is Toto’s, yes.
“But we’re always triggering that scenario in terms of how we work, so he very much believes in letting the pit wall fly the plane as it were and providing the input rather than quarterbacking it.”
A different result for Mercedes if George Russell was let through earlier in the F1 Mexico City GP?
Put to him whether a better result was possible if Russell and Antonelli had swapped earlier, Lord believes it was not possible to guess at the time.
The winner of the Canadian and Singapore Grands Prix this year caught Ollie Bearman following the second round of stops for the four drivers involved in the battle for P4. However, he failed to make a pass, dropped away as he struggled on those soft tyres, and eventually was overtaken by Oscar Piastri. Antonelli also got his place back, dropping Russell to P7.
“I think it’s impossible to say.
“You know, later on, George had clean air, closed up on Bearman on the same life tyre and was unable to get past.
“So I think, ultimately, neither driver quite had the pace to be able to do that today.
“It was not easy to overtake full stop. We saw lots of cars getting stuck in that dirty air and in DRS trains as well, so I’m not sure it would have changed a huge amount of the outcome.
“But, again, we haven’t yet had the time to really do that analysis and see.”
