Although he secured the pole position on Saturday and crossed the line in second place, Barcelona still wasn’t one of the easiest weekends of the Formula 1 season for George Russell. From the midpoint of the Barcelona Grand Prix, the Mercedes drivers began to struggle with increasing understeer and a progressive drop‑off in tyre performance.
This scenario not only gave Lewis Hamilton the opportunity to make his three-stop strategy work, but it also allowed Kimi Antonelli to rapidly close the gap to Russell and emerge as a genuine threat before the final pit stop. It was at this stage, however, that something went wrong for the Mercedes driver.
