This was meant to be George Russell's season. The clearest shot at a first Formula 1 world title in what is, on every available metric, the best car on the 2026 grid. Four rounds in, he is 20 points behind Kimi Antonelli, his 19-year-old rookie teammate, and the gap is starting to ask uncomfortable questions about momentum.
Miami did not help. Russell was a step behind Antonelli all weekend. Antonelli took pole. Russell qualified fifth, around four-tenths off his teammate. He finished the race well behind, having spent the closing 20 laps using his car as an experiment in the search for greater pace, by his own admission of how lost he had felt with the balance.
Antonelli, meanwhile, won his third Grand Prix in a row — a victory Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff described as the rookie's best race so far in F1.
Russell's explanation focuses on track character rather than execution. He has been clear that low-grip surfaces are an outlier for him in this car.
"I just struggle on these low-grip circuits," Russell told Sky Sports F1 after qualifying. "So here in Miami, Zandvoort, Brazil — it was the same last year. It's something I want to work on, but there are three tracks out of the 24 that are outliers, and Miami is definitely top of that list."
He expanded on what makes those weekends so painful for a driver of his style. "I'm quite a smooth, precise driver. That's always been my style. On these tracks, you have to be happy with the car just sliding. I like the car on the edge — but this is like you have a set of 200-degree-old tyres on your car and you go around and it's just sliding, oversteer and understeer. That's the same for everyone. It's so hot."
The self-diagnosis is honest. It is also a problem. The 2026 calendar still includes Zandvoort and Brazil, both of which Russell has just listed as personal weak points. Each time the championship visits one of those circuits, the kind of swing Miami produced is a real possibility.
There is a softer reading of the early season for Russell. Antonelli has been gifted very little — both Mercedes drivers have raced cleanly — but the Italian's safety-car luck in Japan ran for him rather than against him. With kinder timing on those windows, Russell's note in Mercedes briefings is that he could be looking at two wins, not zero, and a championship lead rather than a 20-point deficit.
The Mercedes reading is similar. Russell has acknowledged Antonelli is in a good place at the moment and that the momentum is with the rookie, while choosing publicly to ignore the bigger picture and focus on returning to the top step of the podium.
The next race in Canada is the genuine reset. Russell took the first of his two wins there in 2025. Mercedes is also expected to introduce its first major upgrade of the 2026 season. If Antonelli is on top of him in Montreal — at a higher-grip, harder-braking circuit Russell should prefer — then his case for being the Mercedes title threat starts to wobble in a way that no amount of low-grip alibi can paper over.
This was supposed to be the Russell coronation. With every weekend that picture changes, Antonelli's coronation looks more plausible instead.
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*Originally published on [News Formula 1](https://newsformula.one/article/russell-mercedes-title-deficit-antonelli-miami-2026-smooth-driver-low-grip). Visit for full coverage.*