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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has firmly backed George Russell following an unexpectedly difficult and inconsistent Formula 1 campaign for the British driver.
Ahead of the season, Russell was tipped by bookmakers as the title favourite, with many predicting he would cruise to his maiden championship. However, the campaign told a vastly different story. His Mercedes teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli mounted a sensational charge, putting the 20-year-old on the brink of sealing the crown at the upcoming Mexico City Grand Prix.
Despite a deeply disappointing campaign, Wolff remains convinced that Russell belongs among Formula 1's elite, even if his results have fallen short of expectations.
"To all of us in the team, George is a champion. He has won in every category he has ever raced in," the Austrian told the media in Austin. "I believe he fully deserves to be ranked among the best—we saw that clearly last year. This season, however, we've seen inconsistencies in performance. When we set up the car in a way that suits him, he is blisteringly fast. But the moment the car drops out of that optimal working window, he struggles significantly—perhaps even more so than Kimi."
Russell falling behind Antonelli?
In reality, the Briton has too often struggled to extract the same performance from the W17 as Antonelli. Although he has shown flashes of brilliance, Russell has frequently been overshadowed by his younger teammate this season, with reliability issues and a heavy dose of bad luck compounding his woes.
Analysing the pace deficit—both between the two drivers and across varying performance windows—Wolff revealed that Mercedes will throw all their efforts behind Russell to help close the gap to Antonelli.
"The responsibility is entirely ours," Wolff explained. "We have to work together with him to understand what's causing this substantial gap, because George is not three or five tenths slower than Kimi. That's simply not true. The question is what specific traits of the car he dislikes and how we need to adapt the car and its setup to make it fast. The intelligence, the skill, and the determination are all there."
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