George Russell is not happy
Arriving at Suzuka as the heavy favorite, for the second consecutive qualifying session George Russell is forced to swallow a bitter pill. And while in China a clear technical problem had prevented him from fighting with his (at this point increasingly cumbersome) teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, this time too, according to the British driver, something happened that led him in the wrong direction. Not, therefore, a real breakdown like in Shanghai, but nonetheless an error in the setup changes that made him lose the right confidence behind the wheel of his very fast Mercedes, relegating him to second place on the starting grid, three-tenths from pole position.
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The problem that affected qualifying
“It was really strange, to be honest – explains George Russell in the press conference – because we made a setup change right before qualifying and the car just didn’t feel the same as it had behaved all weekend. You saw my first laps in Q1 when I finished in seventh or eighth position, and so we had to adapt by substantially changing the front wing angle during qualifying (a setup change also allowed under parc fermé conditions, ed.). The team is already taking a look to understand more, but at the moment we don’t know if we did something wrong or what else happened. But, in a way, I’m happy to be in this position because after Q1 I didn’t know how qualifying would end”.
The Championship leader then described how he felt he was struggling on track: “There was something problematic with the rear, which showed up especially in the snaking section. I couldn’t attack any of the curves, the rear end was sliding all the time, but now there’s really nothing we can do. It’s a good starting position for tomorrow, and the race will be long. Of course it’s not ideal because I had felt comfortable with the car all weekend while in qualifying something seems to have broken. So we’ll see, maybe we’ll get some answers from the data analysis, maybe I can adapt my driving style to compensate, but it certainly wasn’t the session we wanted. For two weeks in a row I’ve experienced somewhat complicated qualifying sessions…”.
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Watch out for McLaren and Ferrari
“To be honest, qualifying was very close between the Ferraris and the McLaren, and this was probably a bit of a surprise for us. We both had a very good FP3 session and thought we had a bit more of an advantage over our rivals. Obviously we are still in first and second position, so that’s great, but it’s clear that the others are closing in”, concluded George Russell after qualifying for the 2026 Formula 1 Japanese GP.
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