Suffering from a noticeable straight-line speed deficit compared to Andrea Kimi Antonelli since the opening sessions of the Belgian GP, the #63 driver ended up 0.508 seconds behind the Italian in qualifying. On Sunday (19), as the field swept down the long run between Turns 1 and 5, a major glitch in the engine management software caused him to lose ground to several rivals. In his bid to recover positions, he was involved in an incident with Lewis Hamilton at Les Combes.

While still sitting inside his W17 stranded in the gravel, Russell voiced his frustration over the radio to Mercedes, branding the situation as “unacceptable.” The retirement proved costly, as he watched his teammate extend his lead to 50 points at the top of the Drivers’ Standings with roughly half the season complete.

Speaking with cooler heads to Dutch outlet RacingNews365 at the Hungaroring, the Brit expressed relief that the Silver Arrows had pinpointed a fix. “I’m feeling good now, three days on from Spa, and I think we managed to identify some of the issues that were holding us back throughout the weekend,” he began.

“It’s really reassuring to hear that and to see the hard work everyone at the factory put in to get to the root of the problem. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together. What happened at Spa had already shown early signs back at Silverstone, and that’s simply not the standard we aim for as a team. That’s not just me holding the team accountable; we hold each other to those standards,” he added.

When asked about his heated radio message, Russell dismissed it as a natural reaction to the moment. “Naturally, when you’ve just been eliminated from the race and you’re sitting in the gravel trap on lap one, your emotions run high—especially given everything that led up to Turn 5. But that doesn’t mean there was any lack of effort in trying to figure out what we believed the issue was,” he explained.

George Russell made contact with Lewis Hamilton in Belgium (Video: F1TV)

“We were struggling to pinpoint where those telemetry signals were coming from, but Spa gave us a clear direction on where to look. Once the team dug into that area, they found the issue, and it was great to see,” he celebrated. “However, these cars and power units are insanely complex. You can’t possibly check every single parameter, no matter how small, because there are simply too many variables,” Russell concluded.

Formula 1 returns July 24–26 in Budapest, host of the Hungarian GP, Round 11 of the 2026 season.

F1 Hungarian GP: when to watch in US ET, London (UK), New Delhi (India), Shanghai (China) and Sydney (Australia)

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