George Russell stated that discovering his recent difficulties in Formula 1 were not due to his driving brought a “huge weight” lifted off his shoulders. The problem, identified by Mercedes before the Hungarian GP, was in the team’s power unit.
At the British and Belgian GPs, Russell faced straight-line speed difficulties, initially attributed to his driving style. Therefore, the Briton began trying to adapt his driving to find more performance:
“It’s a huge weight lifted from my mind, but also while I’m driving, at Silverstone and most of Friday and Saturday at Spa, I was thinking about how I needed to drive to make the power unit fast on the straight,” Russell explained to the press. “How I apply the throttle, the use of gears, how early I am on the throttle, and the data was telling us that this was probably the reason [why I was struggling], but in the end, it wasn’t the reason.”
According to the Briton, all the effort to adapt his driving ended up being wasted: “So all that effort over three sessions, trying to re-optimize my driving around a new technique, was kind of in vain.”
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The Mercedes driver is 59 points behind Kimi Antonelli in the standings before F1 returns at the Dutch GP. For Russell, focusing again on the basics may help, although it’s not that simple.
“If I focus on the simple things, I know that’s when I perform my best, but we’re not in a simplistic sport, so saying ‘let’s just focus on the simple things’ is easier said than done sometimes,” he concluded.
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