George Russell confessed that he is copying the approach shown by Lando Norris and McLaren in 2024 and 2025, not giving up on Mercedes’ title chances, even if they start the season off the pace relative to their frontrunning rivals.
Since Lewis Hamilton missed out on the Drivers’ Championship title in controversial fashion at the end of the 2021 campaign, Mercedes have been absent from both World Championship battles. However, they are being tentatively marked as favourites for the first campaign of the new technical regulations in 2026.
If the Silver Arrows don’t start on the front foot, though, Russell won’t assume the job is lost. After all, McLaren recovered from a miserable first half of the 2023 campaign to fight Red Bull for victories at the back end of the year, before taking significant strides in 2024 and 2025 to become back-to-back Constructors’ champions.
“I think drivers who treat a season when they’re not winning as a lost season lose their chance when the opportunity does come,” Russell told Maxim. “So, I’m treating every single race I go to as if this is going to be the race that we’re going to win, and I need to bring absolutely everything to it.
“And I know my opportunity will come. I don’t know if that will be next year, in two years, five years, or 10 years, but I need to keep performing at the highest level of my ability to then be ready for that moment. And you look at it with the McLaren guys just two years ago, they were the slowest team on the grid.
“Nobody would have predicted they would be winning the championship in two years’ time, and if they gave up in that moment and just said, ‘This is a lost season’, they probably wouldn’t be winning a championship now. As I said, we’re all these troops, and we’ve got to keep on pushing, pushing that oil tanker to be pointing in the right direction.”
Russell also dismissed the suggestion that Mercedes had downed tools during the 2025 season. The Brackley-based squad finished second in the Constructors’ Championship standings, pipping rivals Red Bull and Ferrari despite having a rookie, Kimi Antonelli, in one of their seats.
“Yeah, absolutely… we’re not giving up on this season, but we know we’re not going to be winning the championship this year, and we recognise next year is a huge opportunity,” he continued.
“I can’t wait. There are 20 drivers currently who can’t wait. There are two drivers, you know, who are both in orange at the moment (Norris and Oscar Piastri, McLaren), who are quite enjoying the season as it is, but everybody’s looking forward to that new opportunity of new successes.”