I should be admitting that it was me who slept badly this Monday. After all, I was also one of those who did not believe in Lewis Hamilton’s chance of victory. I did not rule out that the record world champion would eventually win a race for Ferrari with a bit of luck, but that he would do it in such convincing fashion was not on my radar.
Yes, he had a bit of luck with the virtual safety car. But there can hardly be any doubt that Hamilton absolutely deserved to win this race in Barcelona. Chapeau!
A small consolation for me: Numerous experts had actually already written off the now 41-year-old Hamilton before his second Ferrari season. Obviously, that was a misjudgment.
Conversely, another candidate for this column would have been Charles Leclerc, but he was nominated in this very column just a week ago and everything there is to say on the subject was already covered off.
So my choice falls on George Russell. He was already “up” after Suzuka, but since then something fundamental has changed about the Briton’s situation. Back then, everyone was still assuming an internal Mercedes duel for the world title.
That may have changed by now.
Must Mercedes soon back Antonelli?
In fact, when looking at the world championship standings right now, you may need a second take, because since Monaco it has no longer been Russell in second place. Instead, it is his former team-mate Hamilton. In Barcelona, the Briton even closed to within 41 points of championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
Curiously, for Russell, who also made up 18 points on his team-mate yesterday, that may be a bigger problem than for Antonelli himself. Because for the first time, team boss Toto Wolff also spoke openly after the Barcelona race about a possible team order at the Silver Arrows.
For the future, Wolff said on Sunday that he “discussed internally with the two drivers how we want to handle the situation where we risk holding each other up”. In such instances, the team may consider letting the faster driver through, and Russell’s problem now is that this is usually Antonelli.
Of course, one swallow does not make a summer, and Ferrari’s victory on Sunday, the first since 2024 by the way, is contrasted by six consecutive Mercedes wins before that. So the favourite’s role in the championship is still quite clearly assigned.
Mercedes remain the favourites, despite a first win for Ferrari
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
But as fast as Mercedes is this year, the W17 is still just as unreliable. In Canada, the issues hit Russell, and now in Barcelona Antonelli. Wolff also made it clear yesterday that this cannot continue. Otherwise Hamilton will be within striking distance in the championship faster than anyone would like.
And that is exactly when things could get really tight for Russell. As long as the fight for race wins, and especially the championship, is only between him and Antonelli, Mercedes has no reason to issue team orders, provided they do not drive into each other.
But in Barcelona, the team hurt itself with this approach for the first time. The internal battle cost “four or five or six seconds” on Sunday, Wolff revealed. That was exactly the time Hamilton needed to come back onto the track ahead of the two Silver Arrows after his pit stop.
At the latest, from this point on, the fun stops for Wolff and Co. Just ask Valtteri Bottas.
Just bad luck? Russell is running out of excuses
A colleague in the editorial team remarked on Sunday that Russell probably would not sleep that badly, after all he had made up 18 points in the championship. So things could have gone much worse. Still, there is another reason why I think Russell is a perfect candidate this week.
Because the Briton is also slowly running out of explanations for why he has once again finished behind Antonelli – or in this case would have finished behind him if the other Mercedes had not given up the ghost.
Kimi Antonelli retired shortly after passing George Russell
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
He still dismissed the first defeat in China as a freak occurrence and blamed it on his technical problem in qualifying. In Japan, in his view, the safety car was to blame, in Canada his failure in the race and most recently in Monaco his unjustified penalty.
“It’s been completely outside of my control, and that is an incredibly difficult pill to swallow,” he said after his zero in the principality. That is basically impossible to argue, but it also ignores the fact that Antonelli was simply faster than Russell on many weekends anyway.
So, on the one hand, the Briton was unlucky, but on the other hand he also always had an “excuse” for his defeat. In Barcelona, for a long time it also looked as if the tide would finally turn again.
“I kind of feel like my old self again,” he said after his pole on Saturday. He had just put three tenths on Antonelli and, at least for the moment, restored what he considered the correct order at Mercedes.
He had oriented himself too much to Antonelli’s setup in the previous races, Russell explained, emphasising that in Barcelona he had “gone my own way again.” That still worked on Saturday – but on Sunday it did not anymore.
Why Barcelona was also a “points win” for Antonelli
Shortly before his retirement, Antonelli overtook Russell on track, and presumably even his subsequent five-second penalty, which no longer mattered in the end because of his retirement, would not have bothered him, because he would still have pulled out the time against Russell on track in the closing laps.
But even if that had not been the case, Antonelli was once again the faster Mercedes driver this Sunday as well. And Russell is slowly running out of explanations.
Was Kimi Antonelli the faster Mercedes driver on Sunday?
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
Because in Barcelona, Mercedes did everything not to hurt Russell. It issued no team order even though Antonelli was faster, and during the second pit stop they even gave Russell priority over Antonelli, thereby risking an undercut by Lando Norris on the championship leader, which only just barely did not work. None of it helped.
“Mercedes was too considerate of George,” Nico Rosberg said on Sky, for example. And he should know, because for three years he found himself in a very similar situation at the Silver Arrows with his then team-mate Hamilton.
Maybe I am seeing this wrong. And maybe George Russell really had a good night because he is only looking at the championship standings. Or because he really believes that he is simply having a streak of bad luck and that everything will turn out fine again.
But it is also clear that I am not the only one who thinks Russell is slowly but surely losing ground – despite P2 in Barcelona. For Ralf Schumacher, Antonelli is already “the clear number 1” at Mercedes, he said yesterday. I would not go that far (yet).
But I share his assessment that despite the retirement, Antonelli scored another points win in the internal duel. “The realisation [that he was faster than Russell] was more important than finishing today,” Schumacher said after the race.
By the way: This same Ralf Schumacher already said before the season opener that Antonelli was his championship favourite. I admittedly laughed that off a bit at the time because on the question of the favourite I was clearly on “Team Russell.”
Possibly another misjudgment on my part.
