#russellcore asks

China: front wing damage in Q2, gear shift failure in Q3, only enough time for one single Q3 lap without optimal tyre warm up and ERS charge. Then no grip after sc restart, getting stuck in dirty air behind Ferraris. Japan: rear suspension setup change that caused rear end stability to deteriorate, consequences of that in quali and race, deployment issues, software bug that caused the PU to enter superclip or charging state. Bad safety car luck. Miami: wrong strat mode during the race, possible FP1 turbo/PU concern reported through radio might've reduced clean setup data. Wrong strat mode on restart. Balance and tyre window issues persisted until late changes adjustments towards Kimi's direction improved the pace. Yes Miami has always been wacky track for George, but it gets to a point. This was not just "bad track, end of story". Canada: mechanical DNF costing him a potential win in what was a great weekend until that. Monaco: no confidence in the car.

George is not the type of driver to lose couple tenths out of the blue. You want to tell me that he just got out of the car at the end of sprint race in China and in those few hours before quali started… what? Forgot how to drive for 3 race weeks, then remembered how to drive in Canada, and then forgot it again in Monaco? Kimi would obviously start getting closer sooner or later and would start giving George tougher fight than last year, but the scale and timing is the problem. There's a big difference between kimi going from being 2-3 tenths slower to suddenly beating George by 2-4 tenths, versus kimi being able to reduce the qualifying gap and be able to have closer fights, like in Canada. It's impossible not to recognize the incredible driver George is, and there comes a point where it’s impossible not to question what’s happening inside Mercedes.

I can't remember a single mechanical/strategic mess up that affected Kimi's points, wasn’t a driver or shared error and put him in disadvantage against George. Sure, he had bad starts pretty much until Canada and some were caused by things out of his hands, but he's not just some innocent bystander. Plus even if he has had more start issues than George, you generally don’t win race on lap 1. If you don’t lose too many positions and have a strong car, which Mercedes is, then slow start isn’t the end of the world (unless it's Monaco and there's no rain/safety car to save you) but a setup issue, deployment issues, etc… that can affect your whole race.

You could just say that Miami is wacky track for George, but he was on the podium last year. Finishing almost 45 seconds behind your teammate isn't just "bad track, get over it". You could say the quali performance in Monaco is his fault, but he was doing great in FP3, didn't manage to get a clean lap because of traffic but he was driving great times. Qualifying comes and it's "I'm not even doing my FP3 lap, so I don't really get it". Plus they put him in the wrong strat mode, again.

He topped q1, 2, 3 in australia, sq1, sq2, sq3 in china by nearly 3 tenths and won both, then it suddenly went downhill. Where did the sudden one lap and race pace difference come from? If he's struggling with adapting to the car, the team is supposed to help. He said that at the start of the year it was easy, that P2 was worst case, but last races it's been nowhere, how does that even happen? After 6 races, the pattern on George's side is hard to explain by ordinary bad luck or "that's racing". Yes, Kimi did have issues, but George's issues were more severe, more technical. His engineers keep making costly mistakes. As a driver, especially as a driver fighting for a WDC, you should be able to trust your engineers.

Kimi and George have different driving styles, but the team should have ideas on how to get the car closer to where George needs it to be. Qualifying report said they ran pretty similar set-ups, it clearly worked for Kimi but not for George, who couldn't get the tyres in the window and had no grip and could not push without sliding all over the place. If he can't get the tyres in the window, the engineers need to figure out why that is what they and he can change to improve that. It's really odd that a driver who has consistently been a top qualifier pretty much since the start of his F1 career, even in shit cars, suddenly is nowhere near his teammate in multiple qualis.

I also really hate the way Merc PR treats him, that doesn't affect race results but I don't think I'm asking for much when I say that the PR team should act more kindly towards a driver who did so much for the team. The "Chase. Every. Millisecond" post… as someone with 0 experience in PR/marketing/media relations, even I can realize that when one of your driver struggles in qualifying, captioning the post like that is a dumb move. I honestly don't know what is their deal lately with their posts. It feels like a lot of them focus on George as the perfect boyfriend to Carmen rather than their senior driver and championship contender.

Then we have the ongoing rumors of George getting replaced from italian and dutch media. Does mercedes do anything to actually stop all these rumors? No. Compare that to Zak Brown, I don't like the guy one bit but at least he immediately spoke up when people started rumors about Oscar leaving.

After Qatar 2025 Mercedes immediately took action to protect Kimi, but when George was getting hate left and right, especially during the "Lewis is getting sabotaged" and "Qatar 24 beef", what they did was nowhere as big. The context is obviously different but cyberbullying and death threats are never okay. The team sometimes put out a community guidelines reminder, or someone from the team occasionally said something, but nothing close to scale of what happened for Kimi.

Yes, Toto did go to a press conference in 24, but he was responding to Horner calling George hysterical. And let's be honest, if Toto had an opportunity to get into another fight with Horner, he'd jump on it. He was also vocal during the sabotage saga and the team did put out a couple public statements, but they can clearly involve the FIA immediately, show them the hate messages and take immediate action when their driver is target of abuse. Police were involved, but that was to find the original sender, if they caught them I doubt all those people sending hate to George would go "well that's it then, I'll stop sending hate to Russell now". Kimi being accused of race fixing is serious, but again: there is nothing that excuses death threats and cyberbullying, there shouldn't be any clear line from when you start telling people to stop.

Toto called Isack unsportsmanlike in China after he refused Kimi's apology right after he ruined his sprint, when emotions and adrenaline were still high. Yes, race fixing versus getting called unsportsmanlike is big difference, but there's still double standard in the way Toto handled this. He's one of the most well known figures in the sport, his words can incite hate, seems weird to protect one young driver and then do this to another.

Then there is that video of Kimi using his phone while driving in Miami last year, the car crash in San Marino this year and the car commercial he did just few weeks after. Sure, we don't know if he was the one driving in San Marino, but putting a driver who was filmed using his phone on a highway a year ago and who might've caused a reckless crash with a company car just few weeks earlier into a car commercial is questionable. So is doing the ad with his dad, who basically did a hit and run with a traffic officer. You'd expect one of the biggest F1 teams and car manufacturers in the world to be a bit more careful with stuff like that.

Then we have RedBull's "borderline something something" comment. Before anyone says "Well, actually. Mercedes did tweet 'You love to see it.' after RedBull's DNFed in Bahrain 22, so that makes it okay", it was 4 years ago, and the whole "beef" ended after 2 tweets, why re-start it now? Plus redbull literally responsed the next race. The "borderline" comment was a petty reminder of a beef that happened 2 seasons ago, where George literally defended himself after his character and integrity as gpda director was attacked. And a comment that max kind of proved in spain last year and in japan this year when he kicked out a journalist. An official F1 team account acting like any other fan account encouraging the hate to one of the drivers is uncalled for and unprofessional. It was uncalled for and unprofessional back in 22, you’d think they learned in 4 years and you’d think Mercedes would at least respond and defend their driver.

okay definitely a lot but anon you brought up some very good points. will take some time to reply to this so i can do your ask justice

some of these are my opinions and not exactly substantiated!!!! if you send hate in my anons, you will be blocked likely after i post your take. there are many other places to hate on george

i think there is something going on between tw and the boards. whatever is happening in the team is largely driven by his ego. you cannot convince me that the board who care so much about the image and pr would allow something like this to drive a driver out. the comments under merc posts are getting more and more brutal, there are murder pictures there.

i wonder if we might be looking at the end of tw's term. i think he might be trying to ensure the youngest ever has wdc so that he can leech off of him as his manager (which he doesn't have with George). Because if he leaves and youngest ever doesn't have it, would he even be valuable to the team?

this wc match is something for real... /s

very very good points here anon

also notice that the mainstream is starting to find cracks in whatever bs torger is spewing as well so it's not just us george fans

you may be onto smth with tw term. apparently his contract runs until '27 so he might have pressure to deliver something of his own (+ boards are definitely aware of general negative perception of him now).

if i am not mistaken, he basically inherited a top team then had a dominant engine with lewis (and nico) + clear #1 in lewis for a lot of that time. so he never had to really build things from scratch unlike horner and brown (with stella) in rbr and mcl respectively. if kimi achieves youngest wdc, it is something that he can 100% claim as his achievement. btw, apparently, even signing george wasn't tw's doing (even though he may claim as such). george initially rejected tw, but gwen brought him back. could contribute to tw wanting kimi to win.

If you hold all the cards and you do not want a driver being on your team, you just do not sign the contract. Or you can break it any time you want (look at RB, McLaren and so on).

And yet tw is not doing any of that.

What he is doing is almost desperate? Look back at the RB management when they were doing the driver carousel. It was nothing like what is happening to George now. That was cold and methodical, because they knew that they had all the power.

But tw in order to bring George down is jumping from one talking point to another. He starts by not admitting the mistake, then later says that the mistake was there all along, then once again says that it wasn't a mistake (Monaco, Barcelona, today).

The mv situation from last year has been his idea, he was pushing the narrative about bringing mv to mercedes. But it was George that came out and said that it was not his seat in question. And he was confident about it. And tw did come out later and admitted it.

This baffles me the most. He presumably has all the power in that team and yet he is powerless and has to resort to this. So, the real question is whether tw even has the power to fire George? Honestly, I don't think so.

Because that management contract is not with mercedes the team, it is with daimler. And those guys do not appear to want George to leave judging by the amount of top sponsor content George is pumping out.

some really good thoughts!!

with RB i think they could do the carousel in GE era because there was a very clear #1 in mv + the car was tailored for him. so it was almost impossible for literally anyone to adapt. and apparently mv has a really extreme driving style. also they basically abused their junior team + academy of drivers to choose from. so with the drivers' inexperience, rb held all the power over the 2nd drivers and could easily rotate them.

agree that the real baffling part with george is that if torger wants to undermine george so much, then why don't they just fire him? i agree with you that torger doesn't hold that much power. he's just really fucking loud and is the "face" of mercedes f1 but the board is working behind the scenes. likely torger wants mv but the board objected because of the moneyy (i have seen reports of this)

so while george was working hard on his negotiations behind the scenes, torger was basically trying to make noise because he probably wasn't that involved so he was trying to project his ideas...? idk why he would do it so publicly though... and ironically the more credible mv rumours that came were mv to mclaren or staying with rb so torger clearly didn't succeed

i think we can maybe speculate that there might be tension between the board and torger in terms of driver lineup among many other things. news today dropped as well on gwen leaving for rb which might signal some cracks...?

yes george is still doing majority of sponsor content for mercedes amg (the car company)

thank you anon for sending this in!

idt im the right person to ask because i know nothing about football+ literally got into it this wc + very very recently endeared by england nt

but i'll give my two cents

personally idt tuchel will be fired, might even be extended depending on how euros 2028 goes, i think that will really be the key factor. and euros 28 will be hosted by the uk too so it will be home territory for them aka added advantage but also extra pressure ofc

people booing him and calling for him to be fired is really just kneejerk to me. the wound of the loss is very much still fresh so it will trigger extreme reactions. definitely hurts even more when it's oh so close

exactly!!!! genuinely worthy of a final

yes i heard and what could have been right...

and some commentary i've been seeing online is that argentina definitely got away more than they should have (not really an expert on this part, just what i saw online)

considering their QF matchup on paper should be easy...we shall see how it goes

omg anon i feel you :(((

no doubt i was happy that george won last race but there's always the impending doom of what will happen next race or how will they mess it up again

this season is absolutely testing my mental resilience. at the same time, i still trust in george 100%