(Motorsport-Total.com) – Second place, important points and the best result in several races: At first glance, George Russell could have been satisfied with his performance at the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona-Catalunya. But behind the result lies a development that is likely to keep Mercedes busy after the race.
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Because the Brit initially had a strong start to the race and was even able to pull away slightly from Lewis Hamilton in the early stages. But the longer the race lasted, the more the balance of power shifted in favor of the Ferrari driver. Hamilton eventually took control and drove to a dominant victory, while Russell increasingly lost pace.
The crucial question after the race was therefore: Where had the strong pace gone that Russell had shown at the beginning?
Mercedes suspects tire degradation
Team boss Toto Wolff did not yet have a definitive explanation immediately after the race. When asked why Russell could not continue his strong start, the Mercedes team boss answered surprisingly briefly. “No,” Wolff said initially.
Then he provides his first guess. “I think it all has to do with tire degradation.” However, this is initially just an assessment. “That would be my spontaneous answer,” Wolff explains. “But we need time to analyze it.”
The statement matches the impressions from the race. While Russell initially seemed competitive on the medium tires, he increasingly lost performance, especially on the hard tires.
Russell felt uncomfortable on the hard tires
The driver himself describes a similar picture. “The race actually felt good at first,” Russell explains. “I felt solid and slowly increased the gap to Lewis.”
However, Ferrari then began to approach the race strategically aggressively. “Hamilton obviously opted for the three-stopper very early.” Mercedes reacted to the development and tried to initially cover Ferrari’s strategy. At the same time, however, they stuck to the originally planned two-stop race.
Exactly from that point on, the picture changed. “From then on, it became quite difficult,” says Russell. Especially with the hard tire, the Brit never found the desired rhythm. “I just didn’t have the pace and wasn’t particularly happy with the hard tire.”
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“George had incredible pace on the medium tires,” Wolff adds. “But towards the end of the stint, it dropped off.” The situation was similar on both hard stints afterwards. “We need to analyze why that happened.”
Russell sees Hamilton as a deserving winner
Despite all the questions surrounding his own performance, Russell makes no secret of the fact that Hamilton simply had the stronger overall package that day. “We have to look at that retrospectively,” says the Brit.
At the same time, he doesn’t believe that the result came about solely through strategy or race luck. “I think Lewis would have gotten past anyway.”
Hamilton did benefit from a Virtual Safety Car phase, which additionally helped him during his pit stop. “He overtook us due to the Virtual Safety Car.” But Russell does not see this as the decisive factor. Rather, Ferrari simply had better speed over the distance.
Early pit stop as a strategic dilemma
Russell’s analysis of the strategy phase in the first third of the race is particularly interesting. When asked about the early first pit stop on lap 13, he admits that under normal circumstances, this would not have been his preferred option. “If I had been driving alone and there had been no other cars in the race, I would not have stopped on lap 13.”
But Formula 1 rarely operates under ideal conditions; they were forced to block Hamilton’s undercut. “You never race alone,” says Russell. “They put us in a very difficult position to pit so early.”
Nevertheless, Russell does not attribute the cause of his defeat solely to tactical decisions. “The truth is, my pace today just wasn’t quite strong enough.” In retrospect, he considers it quite possible that a three-stopper would also have worked. “I think I could have mirrored his strategy.”
However, this would have created new risks. Ferrari might then have done the opposite and opted for the two-stop strategy. Russell sees another point: “That might have made me vulnerable to Kimi.”
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