George Russell shrugged off complaints over the expected energy starvation at Formula 1’s British Grand Prix and stated that, although the drivers may find the increased energy management aspect challenging, it will create “better racing”.
The opening round of the 2026 season in Melbourne played out to mixed reviews; while some enjoyed the chaotic ‘yo-yo’ brand of racing seen with the new cars, others decried it as ‘artificial’ given the splits in energy between drivers.
In recent races, the effect of energy management has not been so pronounced, particularly following the changes to the allocated deployment and electrical power available to drivers. It is expected that Silverstone will provide the sternest test for the revised regulations.
The lack of braking around the Silverstone circuit will put a premium on energy recovery, and lead to a greater concentration of superclipping around a lap; this could change the complexion of some of the myriad high-speed corners around the track.
A handful of drivers who have experienced the 2026 cars in the simulator around Silverstone have offered less than complimentary opinions, while others have reserved judgement. Russell says that it will be challenging, but reckons that the fans in attendance will enjoy the spectacle regardless – even if qualifying is slightly hindered by the expectation of superclipping.
“I think Silverstone will be great,” Russell reckoned. “With these regs, we knew there were going to be some tracks that are more difficult than others for 22 drivers to experience.
“[There are] 600,000 fans here who probably don’t care so much about energy management. On the flip side, the tracks that are most challenging for the energy such as Melbourne, China, they have so far produced better racing than we’ve seen in the past of those tracks.
“There’s no doubt the tracks that are energy starved the racing will be better. It probably will be a bit more chaotic.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
“So you could look at that as the positive. But for sure, a single-lap qualifying is not going to be as fast as we’ve seen in the years gone by.”
Asked if he thought the handling of the current cars would feel “awful”, Russell made the argument that drivers needed to be open-minded.
For example, the Briton explained that the drivers’ opinions were all relative; in his experience, it did not necessarily matter how fast the car was. He noted that the fastest car he’d ever driven in F1 – Williams’ FW43 from 2020 – was an un-enjoyable experience, particularly as it was not at all competitive.
“I think awful is a strong word you know, it depends what you’re after, to be honest I of course take enjoyment from driving the fastest cars and the fastest engines in the world,” Russell said.
“Throughout my F1 career the fastest race car I drove over the course of a season was probably the 2020 Williams car and we didn’t score a single point in the whole season.
“Did I enjoy that? Not at all, and the lap time I achieved in qualifying in 2020 in Silverstone is probably going to be much faster than what I achieve this Saturday. But I hope this Saturday I have more enjoyment because we’re all competitive animals, we all want to race, we want to fight with our competitors.
“And I loved doing that in Formula 2. Those lap times are 10 seconds slower than what we achieve in F1 now and as I said we’ve got 600,000 fans here this weekend who are also not going to be saying ‘this is awful’.
“I think we just need to keep a slightly open mind. I still think the best race cars in history were the early 2000s cars, but you count the number of overtakes in a season, which is probably the same as the number of overtakes we get in a single race these days. So we can’t have it all.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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