Mercedes driver George Russell is riding high at the start of the 2026 Formula One season, with a Grand Prix win in Australia and a victory in the Chines Sprint event already under his belt. Yet a mechanical gremlin in qualifying meant the British driver was only able to complete one lap in Grand Prix Q3, losing pole to his team mate Kimi Antonelli.
Russell is currently on his second consecutive one year contract with Mercedes after he failed to negotiate a longer deal towards the close of the 2025 season. Both he and Lewis Hamilton were handed just one year deals in 2024, something which saw the seven ties world champion decided his future with the Brackley based F1 team was less than secure.
Despite dominating his rookie team mate last season, Russell could only negotiate a contract with Mercedes that would see him through to the end of this season. The reason being team boss Toto Wolff went publicly courting Max Verstappen as his lead driver for 2026, but the quadruple world champion decided on one more year at Red Bull Racing.
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George Russell on just a one year deal with Mercedes F1
When faced with questions from journalists over why his new deal for 2026 had just a one year timeline, Russell was defensive when it was suggested Verstappen may be lined up for 2027. He insisted he had a performance element to his option for a second year add on for next season, should Wolff once again open negotiations with Vertsappen.
“It is something I haven’t actually said publicly, but the deal is, if I’m performing [next year 2026], we have a specific clause that if I reach [a target], we will automatically renew for 2027,” Russell revealed. “So my seat for 2027 is in my hands. I’m not being strung along here. We’re not going to be in the same position as we were six months ago. If I perform, and I don’t want to go into details, but if I perform, then 100 per cent I’ll be staying.”
The details of the performance clause have not been revealed by either Mercedes or Russell, but it will certainly include beating his junior team mate Kimi Antonelli. The Italian has had an up and down start to this year, falling dramatically through the field at both the start in Melbourne in and in Shanghai on Saturday morning.
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Yet he remains just 11 points behind his team mate going into the Chinese grand Prix. Antonelli is on pole and in prime position to get one up on his team mate and another Mercedes 1-2 with Antonelli claiming his first victory of the year, would see the points tally reduced with Russell on 51 points and the Italian with 47.
Verstappen and Red Bull have started the season miserably, and whilst for now there is no talk of the Dutch driver leaving his Milton Keynes based team, should the trend continue, then Max’s future will most certainly come into question.
Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton is the latest driver to accuse Mercedes of abusing their position as a power unit manufacturer over their customer teams. Following the Sprint Hamilton spoke openly to the paddock media, claiming his former Mercedes employer (2013-24) were using a version of the “party mode” banned by the FIA since 2020.
Lewis Hamilton accuses his former team of cheating
The engine mode to which Hamilton refers was a high power setting used exclusive during qualifying. Mercedes employed this between 2018-2020 to enhance the performance of the PU by deploying incremental revs over a single lap to deliver maximum power deployment. The mode was not permitted during the Grand Prix to ensure the longevity of the engine.
When asked about Mercedes power advantage over his Ferrari team, Hamilton was blunt. “The difference is, I mean, I was with Mercedes for a long, long time, so I know how it works there. In qualifying, they have another mode that they’re able to go to, a bit like a ‘party mode’ back in the day.”
With “party mode” banned by the FIA, Lewis believes his former team have found some clever way to enhance the power of their engine for a short period of time. “Once they get to Q2 they switch that on, and we don’t have that. So whatever that is. And then in the race they obviously don’t have that mode, so they still obviously have an advantage overall.
“We’ve got to figure out what that is, but there’s something more they’re able to extract, particularly in Q2. You see in Q1 we’re not that far away, and then all of a sudden it’s like a huge step. A tenth behind in Q1, I think it was, and then all of a sudden it’s seven tenths or another half a second. It’s a big step,” concluded the seven times world champion.
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Data suggests Mercedes improvement is greater
Lewis Hamilton appears to have a point given that in Q1, the eventual pole sitter Kimi Antonelli delivered a best lap time of 1:33.305. his best time in Q2 was a whopping eight and a half tenths quicker and his pole time again another three and a half tenths faster again.
Meanwhile Hamilton who qualified third, the best of the non-Mercedes cars delivered a 1:33.522 in Q1, then a 1:32.567 in Q2 – almost a second quicker. His final time in Q3 was just a tenth and a half faster again, meaning he gained 1.1 seconds from the start to the finish of qualifying.
Antonelli’s improvement across the same sessions was 1.2 seconds, although with experienced driver George Russell posting just one Q3 time, the total Mercedes improvement could have been much bigger.
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Last Updated on March 14 2026, 2:31 pm
At the 2026 Formula One season opener in Australia, there was a moment of deja vu for paddock observers as Mercedes utterly dominated the qualifying simulation runs in free practice three. George Russell was a massive 0.616 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the works Ferrari, which sent shudders through the engineers at the rest of the team’s on the grid.
In qualifying, Mercedes was even more dominant, with Russell claiming his eight career pole position by a whopping 0.8 seconds from the next non-Mercedes car, Isack Hadjar.
Mercedes HPP engine customers were “shocked” by the gap given they were running the same power units. Williams boss James Vowels said he had been “caught off guard” by the efficiency of the deployment of the Mercedes power unit used by Williams. This led to speculation in some quarters that during testing in Bahrain, the Mercedes HPP engine customers had not received the final product which was being run by the Brackley based works team…… CONTINUE READING
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No, he isn’t. His performance clause guarantees him to be safe as long as his performs & Max would more realistically leave F1 altogether than change teams anymore.