Russell's 'Rubbish' Austin Pace Cuts His Hold on Second to One Point

George Russell finished eighth at Sunday’s United States Grand Prix after starting sixth, while his Mercedes team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli converted pole position into his ninth win of the season. Russell, speaking to PlanetF1 afterwards, called his pace “rubbish” and said he hoped the team would find answers. Those four points leave him second in the drivers’ championship, one point clear of Lewis Hamilton, with five rounds remaining and three drivers within nine points of him.

The title itself is not the issue. Antonelli’s lead is 123 points. What Austin exposed is how quickly the fight for second has become a four-way scramble, and how little margin Russell now has to absorb another weekend like this one.

Eighth in a race-winning car

The bare result is damning enough. Antonelli started first and finished first. Russell started sixth and went backwards, finishing behind two cars that had lined up behind him. Lando Norris climbed from eighth to fifth. Oscar Piastri, who started seventh, also finished ahead of the second Mercedes. Isack Hadjar, Red Bull’s second driver, started third and dropped to sixth, yet still beat Russell to the flag.

When one driver wins in a car and the other is the slowest of the front-runners, the car alone cannot explain the gap. That is not a judgement on Russell’s ability, which is not in doubt after five seasons of evidence. It does mean the problem sits in the space between driver and machine: set-up direction, tyre behaviour over a stint, or how a particular configuration suits one driving style and punishes another.

Circuit of the Americas is a demanding place to get that balance wrong. Its bumps, its rapid first-sector direction changes and its heavy traction zones leave little room for a car that is even slightly out of its window. A driver who cannot lean on the rear tyres through the long, loaded corners will feel it in the second half of every stint. Russell’s own description suggests he was not fighting a single, fixable fault but a car that never felt right. That is harder to diagnose in the few days before Mexico.

The pattern matters as much as the race. Mercedes has won 12 Grands Prix this season. Antonelli has nine of them, Russell three. Their combined total has the team 133 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship. Russell has contributed 242 of Mercedes’ 607 points, a perfectly respectable share in isolation. Set beside a team-mate on 365, it shows which side of the garage has more often extracted the most from this year’s car.

One point between Russell and the chasing pack

Before Austin, Russell had a cushion. He arrived in Texas nine points clear of Hamilton, 17 ahead of Max Verstappen and 23 ahead of Charles Leclerc. One weekend later, those margins have shrunk to one, six and nine.

Driver	Team	Points	Gap to Russell	Gained on Russell in Austin
George Russell	Mercedes	242	n/a	n/a
Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	241	1	8
Max Verstappen	Red Bull	236	6	11
Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	233	9	14
Lando Norris	McLaren	211	31	6

Leclerc’s second place, from fourth on the grid, was the most damaging individual result for Russell. With Verstappen third and Hamilton fourth, all three of his nearest rivals finished in the top four. Both Ferraris and both Red Bulls finished ahead of him. On a weekend when Russell needed only to keep pace with his rivals, he lost ground to every one of them.

The irony of Hamilton sitting a point behind is obvious. Russell inherited team leadership at Mercedes when Hamilton left for Ferrari at the end of 2024. Losing second place to his former team-mate, while driving the dominant car of the season, would read badly regardless of the circumstances. Hamilton has won only once this year, but he has been consistently close enough to the front to profit when others stumble.

Norris, 31 behind, is a long shot rather than a contender. A McLaren resurgence across the final five rounds could still bring him into the picture, but he would need Russell’s slide to continue and the three drivers between them to falter as well.

What second place is worth inside Mercedes

Finishing second in a season so dominated by one driver can seem like a consolation prize. Within a team, it carries real weight.

Recent history offers a clear reference. Sergio Pérez finished second to Verstappen in 2023 despite long spells when his form fell away badly. The result gave Red Bull a one-two in the standings and allowed Pérez to argue he had done his job. By the following season, with the cushion gone, his position became untenable. Valtteri Bottas secured second behind Hamilton for Mercedes in 2019 and 2020, and those results underpinned his status as a valued number two even as the pace gap was plain.

Russell is in a different position from either. He is not a support driver; he has spent his Mercedes career presenting himself as a future champion, and he outscored Hamilton across 2022 to back up that claim. The danger for him is narrative as much as arithmetic. If Antonelli wins the title in his second season while Russell slips to third, fourth or fifth in the same car, the conversation within the team, and in the paddock, shifts. The question stops being whether Russell can beat Antonelli and becomes whether he can reliably finish behind him.

For Mercedes, the incentive is plain. A first drivers’ championship one-two since 2020 would be a powerful statement about the team’s recovery after the lean years of the previous regulations. Toto Wolff’s operation has built a car capable of winning a dozen races. It would be a strange outcome if only one of its drivers finished the year looking as though he belonged at the front.

What Mexico demands of Mercedes and of Russell

The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is an unusual test. At more than 2,000 metres above sea level, the thin air reduces downforce and drag, makes cooling harder for power units and brakes, and leaves cars sliding more than usual through the slow stadium section. Teams run their highest-downforce wings and still find grip in short supply. A car that is sensitive to set-up will be found out there just as quickly as at Austin, if for different reasons.

That cuts both ways for Russell. Mexico is a chance to reset, at a venue with entirely different demands from those that hurt him on Sunday. If his struggle in Texas was tied to the particular loads and bumps of Circuit of the Americas, a fresh baseline could restore him to Antonelli’s level. If the problem is more fundamental, a gradual divergence in how the two drivers want the car to behave, Mexico will confirm it.

The engineering response will be telling. Mercedes has every reason to give Russell’s side of the garage whatever latitude it needs to experiment with a different set-up direction on Friday. The constructors’ title is not yet secure in mathematical terms, although 133 points with five rounds left is a commanding position, so the team cannot afford to treat its second car as an afterthought.

Russell, for his part, must protect second without waiting for perfection. His rivals do not need him to collapse. They only need him to finish behind them. Hamilton will almost certainly pass him simply by finishing ahead of him. Verstappen needs one decent result. Leclerc, the form driver among the chasers on Sunday’s evidence, needs to outscore him by 10 points, which one strong afternoon could deliver.

Mexico decides whether Austin was a blip

Austin was one bad afternoon, not a crisis, and Russell has earned the benefit of the doubt. But the margin for error has gone. With three Ferrari and Red Bull drivers within nine points and five races to run, Russell now needs to beat at least two of them almost every weekend.

He also needs Mexico to show that Sunday was the exception. If he finishes on the podium there, Austin becomes a footnote. If he finishes outside the top five again, expect Hamilton to arrive at the next round in second place, and the questions about Russell’s standing at Mercedes to become considerably louder.