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Kimi Antonelli crossed the line 1.9 seconds clear of Charles Leclerc to claim his sixth win of the 2026 season at Spa-Francorchamps. His teammate wasn’t there to see it. George Russell‘s afternoon ended in the gravel on lap five, and while Lewis Hamilton collected a five-second penalty for his role in the collision at the Les Combes chicane, the contact itself wasn’t what Russell was most furious about.
Coming out of La Source on the opening lap, his battery was completely depleted by that point, leaving him defenseless along the Kemmel Straight as Leclerc powered by. Hamilton arrived shortly after. The rest is gravel.
Toto Wolff, speaking to Sky Sports after the race, didn’t look for an exit. “It 100% goes on us,” he said, splitting the cause roughly down the middle – “Probably half of it is to be attributed to the power unit that wasn’t as good as it should have been on his side, and the other side maybe on the driving” – while making clear that blame for the deployment failure sat with the team. “But we are in this together. We all make mistakes. Today it was a mistake that the team did, another day is going to be the mistake of the driver, and we just need to minimize it and support each other.”
Asked how he was going to deal with Russell’s disappointment after today, he answered: “I haven’t seen him yet, but it’s completely understandable that the moment you’re out of this race it’s so frustrating and the emotions boil. That’s why I completely understand. He has our 100% support. We are trying to solve all the issues; he’s doing everything he can to get on top of his driving. So yeah, I haven’t spoken to him but I’m gonna try to put my arm around him.”
The straight-line deficit had been visible since Friday practice, when Russell was losing as much as eight tenths to Antonelli on the high-speed sections alone. By qualifying, he’d halved that gap to around four tenths – still enough to leave him half a second behind Antonelli’s pole lap overall, starting P4 before a Norris grid penalty bumped him to third. More than 75% of that qualifying deficit, per Russell’s own assessment of the telemetry, was coming from the power unit rather than anything he was doing behind the wheel.
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the team had no answer.
“There is a clear loss that we cannot explain by driving style,” Shovlin told the BBC. The working theory coming into the weekend had centred on how the 2026 regulations link energy harvesting through corners to deployment on the straights that follow – drivers who brake harder and carry less speed through corners tend to drain the battery faster and pay for it at the next straight. Spa, with its limited braking zones, concentrates that problem. But Russell had been insisting since qualifying that driving style couldn’t account for all of it, and Wolff eventually agreed. “George is obviously suffering from a lack of straight-line speed we are unable to explain,” the Mercedes boss told Formula1.com on Saturday.
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Coming out of La Source on the opening lap, his battery was completely depleted by that point, leaving him defenseless along the Kemmel Straight as Leclerc powered by. Hamilton arrived shortly after. The rest is gravel.
Toto Wolff, speaking to Sky Sports after the race, didn’t look for an exit. “It 100% goes on us,” he said, splitting the cause roughly down the middle – “Probably half of it is to be attributed to the power unit that wasn’t as good as it should have been on his side, and the other side maybe on the driving” – while making clear that blame for the deployment failure sat with the team. “But we are in this together. We all make mistakes. Today it was a mistake that the team did, another day is going to be the mistake of the driver, and we just need to minimize it and support each other.”
Asked how he was going to deal with Russell’s disappointment after today, he answered: “I haven’t seen him yet, but it’s completely understandable that the moment you’re out of this race it’s so frustrating and the emotions boil. That’s why I completely understand. He has our 100% support. We are trying to solve all the issues; he’s doing everything he can to get on top of his driving. So yeah, I haven’t spoken to him but I’m gonna try to put my arm around him.”
The Power Unit Problem That Nobody Could Solve
The straight-line deficit had been visible since Friday practice, when Russell was losing as much as eight tenths to Antonelli on the high-speed sections alone. By qualifying, he’d halved that gap to around four tenths – still enough to leave him half a second behind Antonelli’s pole lap overall, starting P4 before a Norris grid penalty bumped him to third. More than 75% of that qualifying deficit, per Russell’s own assessment of the telemetry, was coming from the power unit rather than anything he was doing behind the wheel.
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the team had no answer.
“There is a clear loss that we cannot explain by driving style,” Shovlin told the BBC. The working theory coming into the weekend had centred on how the 2026 regulations link energy harvesting through corners to deployment on the straights that follow – drivers who brake harder and carry less speed through corners tend to drain the battery faster and pay for it at the next straight. Spa, with its limited braking zones, concentrates that problem. But Russell had been insisting since qualifying that driving style couldn’t account for all of it, and Wolff eventually agreed. “George is obviously suffering from a lack of straight-line speed we are unable to explain,” the Mercedes boss told Formula1.com on Saturday.
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