Leclerc and Russell have bonded over struggle confusion

George Russell and Charles Leclerc have been relating to each other over their performance struggles during the 2026 Formula 1 season.

Leclerc and Russell finished one-two in the British Grand Prix and were visibly laughing with surprise in the post-race cooldown room.

Leclerc said “Who would've thought?" to which Russell replied: “Who would've thought? Not me!”

Russell revealed at the Belgian GP the exchange had its roots in conversations with Leclerc earlier in the weekend about their predicament.

“Charles and I were texting after FP1 on Friday ahead of sprint qualifying,” Russell explained.

“So I'm not going to go into detail about our conversation, but then when we finished 1-2, and it was like ‘who would have thought [it] not us’, and that was sort of in reference back to what we were talking about on the Friday.

“Our lives are just constantly being filmed, and it just feels like quite an organic moment, to be honest, in that cooldown room, because there are just so many emotions, and even though you know there's a camera there, you are just quite open and free.”

Leclerc has faced far stiffer intra-team competition from Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari this year, and his Silverstone victory marked a much-needed turnaround in an otherwise tricky season.

Russell is 25 points behind his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli in the championship, having finally got the title-challenging Mercedes he’d wanted since he joined in 2022.

Despite finishing second and gaining 18 points on Antonelli, Russell admitted after the race, "I'm not going to fight for a championship if the performances continue like that”.

On Thursday at the Belgian GP, Russell was asked to expand on what he has to improve. Russell replied: “Just going faster. To be honest, it's as simple as that.

“The good thing is I've not left a single tough weekend confused where the pace is. It's been so clear on the data. Sometimes it's been so obvious that our chief engineer, almost called it a car problem. It's so clear on the data and it can be solved.

“Whereas I've seen in the past from other drivers or previous team-mates where if you're off the pace, it's kind of like scratching your head to understand why.

"I know exactly why. If I don't win or if I'm not on pole, it's clear on the data why that is and what I need to do to improve that.

“When I am on pole, it's clear why that is. It's not a case of I've forgotten how to drive one day and I'll remember the next. It's just not getting the car in that sweet spot.

“Last year, I felt I had a very high hit rate of how often I could get the full potential for the car, the set-up, the tyres with my engineers. This year, that hit rate is far lower and that's what I'm working on to make it more consistent.”

If the reasons for Russell’s struggles are so clear, then why can’t they be rectified?

“It's like if somebody asked you to draw the Mona Lisa and you've got the Mona Lisa next to you, do you think you could achieve it straight away? Maybe with practice, you will,” Russell explained when The Race asked him that.

“With these new power units, with these new tyres, with these new cars, I'm having to set the car up in a way that is not suited to my driving.

“I'm having to drive in a way that I haven't driven in my whole career and I'm having to adapt to this.

“I know exactly what I need to do, but going out and then achieving it when I've driven for 20 years in a certain way, and even more so, it's been working for 20 years and now suddenly it's working 50% of the time, but 50% of the other time it's not working.

“Trying to recognise, ‘OK, is it going to work this weekend my normal way or do I need to adapt my approach?’.

"If I need to adapt my approach, ‘how do I do that and how do I do it and be quick?’.

“When I've performed at my very best, I've just been performing subconsciously, not even been thinking about driving and now you're having to think, trying to make these new techniques become subconscious techniques and that is the challenge.

“Everyone here is at the top of their game and it goes back to this conversation with Leclerc and also some of the challenges he's having.

“It doesn't make a lot of sense one day why we’re so competitive and the next day we’re not?”

Leclerc wants to validate breakthrough

Leclerc remains understandably guarded on exactly what changed during the Silverstone weekend, but he clearly found something mid-weekend.

He alluded to "a moment on Friday night at Silverstone where I saw a detail and I was like, 'OK, this is very difficult to quantify, but if I happen to change that and make it more to my liking, then my feeling will most likely be a lot better'."

He said: "There were just a few things that I changed at Silverstone to try and fit this generation of cars and to try and help my driving with it, that made it quite a lot better.

"But as I said at Silverstone, this is something I want to prove on multiple racetracks. It’s not only with one race win - and I’m very happy with the race win - but it’s not only with one race win that now everything is fine and I’m relaxed.

"There’s a lot of work in order to try and keep that form and keep that feeling, most of all, because if the feeling is there, as I was saying earlier, it has been the case that when I feel good with a car, normally the laptimes and the performance come.

"So I’ll just try and work as hard as possible to try and keep that feeling for the rest of the season and on different track layouts."