From 19th on the grid, Mercedes driver George Russell gained 10 positions to finish in P9 in the 2026 F1 Singapore GP.
Having cleared the Cadillacs on the first lap, the driver of car #63 made slow progress through the field as overtaking at Marina Bay is very tough. He passed Bortoleto, Albon and Colapinto to be P14 by Lap 6. Eventually he cleared Carlos Sainz after six tours behind him, before overtaking Ocon.
A VSC to clear Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin helped a bit as it ended just as he came into his box, moving ahead of Ollie Bearman because of it.
After passing Pierre Gasly, Nico Hülkenberg put in a superb defence on a couple of occasions to hold onto P8 from the Brit, despite the 28-year-old having softs versus mediums and a far quicker car.
George Russell on difficult 2026 F1 Singapore GP
The man 2nd in the Drivers’ Championship kept it short and sweet when asked about his recovery drive in the print media pen. He is now 102 points behind Kimi Antonelli ahead of the United States GP next time out.
“Yeah, I mean, first stint made good progress. Second stint, Nico did a good job defending. Really, really challenging.
“But yeah, not much more I want to say.”
While the VSC could have helped him take P7 if it had stayed that way for another 15 to 20 seconds, George Russell was not worried about it afterwards.
In Baku, Max Verstappen pushed him all the way to the line for victory. At Sepang and in Singapore, the Dutchman was in dominant form to win both.
After the 2026 F1 Singapore GP, the main concern for George Russell is Mercedes trying to understand the updated package and also looking to get on terms with the RB22. Kimi Antonelli did deliver good pace in clean air on Sunday, suggesting there is potential in the updated W17.
“Yeah, I mean, 10 seconds more, 5, 10, 20 seconds more, it would have helped the picture, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over that.
“I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we’re going to find more performance because the performance of Red Bull has been very impressive for the last three weeks on three very different circuits.
“And yeah, right now they are the team to beat.”
Hard work ahead and taking no breaks ahead of Austin
“No plans right now. We’ll spend a little bit of time with the team.
“As I said, the goal right now is we need to decide how to get more out of this package. You know, what Kimi ran, the numbers say it’s performing as we expect, but obviously the lap times haven’t been that great.
“We need to try and understand how to make that work.”
