F1 interviews

George Russell in the post qualifying press conference in Zandvoort for the 2026 Dutch GP:

“But I’m, I just feel, I think after the break, I just feel way more relaxed. You know, I, I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to lose. Um, you know, the pressure’s off.

I’m just gonna go out, enjoy it, and, you know, I don’t even really feel in a fight. You know, it’s not mine to lose, um, it’s mine to gain.

So that’s the mentality I’ve got, and I feel, yeah, it’s gonna help me. I’m just enjoying driving.

Q : What, what’s your biggest achievement? What do you want to achieve i- in your dreams the most?

: Win World Championships, but I think everybody wants that.

Q : How many?

VER : The record is seven, so...

Q : Nice. Well done. Thank you.

Q: Car performance isn’t there. D- do you take some confidence from what Kimi Antonelli is doing?
You know, he was your teammate in F2. You went toe-to-toe together.
I mean, who can forget your race in Monaco? But anyway. That was good. It’s good, isn’t But do you take some confidence saying, you know, Kimi having the year he’s having, you just need the right car and, and-

: No, I take a huge amount of confidence in that, and, and that’s why I, I, it’s probably why I can sleep well at night, you know, knowing that, that Kimi, even Isack, you know, these are guys who are performing incredibly well in, in cars that are also very fast.

Um, it proves to me that I have what it takes because I’ve raced these guys throughout my junior career and have stacked up, you know, positively against them.

So that tells me that, that it’s just a matter of time. I’m not in a rush, but when I get the car that can, can win races, I’m gonna win races.

Probably another strategy to put pressure off himself and McLaren like he did last weekend. In fact last race in Spa he and his car were as fast as the winner in the race but Norris started the weekend claiming they had the fourth fastest car.

0.5 sec is a big gap between teammates. Will there be a difference between pit stop strategy between the two Mercedes drivers tomorrow ?

Interesting because I’ve Heard Leclerc tell the French media at least he changed something after the sprint.

Q: (David Fioux – L’Equipe) Charles, how is it possible, here on your right, how is it possible for things to change so much on a car? Yesterday you’ve talked about philosophical matters on your car. But as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know that philosophy can make a car go any faster.

CL: Yeah, I mean, when I say philosophical, it’s more about small details that just fit my driving a little bit better in a particular phase of the corner. I don’t want to go too much into detail there. But it’s just a few things that I saw on the data on Friday night and I was like, « OK, that might be things that just don’t fit with my driving style. » And we changed those few things from sprint race to qualifying and that was a lot better. So yeah, I was very proud of the work we’ve done to see that because I think this kind of change is not really so black and white. You just don’t look at data and say, « My God, OK, this is what we need to change. » It’s intuition mixed with feeling. Then we went for it and it was actually a very successful direction for me. I was very happy.

HAM : And what gives me confidence is, you know, I’ve, I’ve, you know, coming into this weekend, the simulator said that we should start, um, i-in a much different place with the, with the setup, and I and my engineers started to— decided to stay with one, uh, in, in the direction that we would normally go. Charles started under where he was, where the sim would s-say to go, and then ended up my philosophy and the di-direction that I was taking was ultimately the right one, and, and he migrated that way. And it’s good to see that that direction that I have pushed for is paying off. And, um, and, and, now we just gotta continue to make changes and continue to push. We’ve gotta continue to bring upgrades. Uh, Spa’s gonna be long straights. But, um, yeah. Uh, and ultimately, I’ve gotta do a better job than I did this weekend

What ? He could have been 6 tenths up on the first car ?