George Russell and Kimi Antonelli: evo speaks to both Mercedes F1 drivers ahead of Monaco
Ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, evo sits down with the championship leaders, team-mates and rivals, George Russell and Kimi Antonelli
A few days before this weekend’s 2026 Monaco Grand Prix, evo sat down for a chat with both Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team drivers at Silverstone.
George Russell and Kimi Antonelli were attending a customer handover event for Mercedes-AMG’s new GT2 Edition W16 – a track-only special based on AMG’s GT2 race car, named after the 2025 Mercedes F1 car and limited to a production run of 30 cars.
Coincidentally, the event’s timing fell at a moment when interest in both drivers and their relationship as team-mates is more intense than usual. Between them, the Mercedes drivers have won every race thus far in 2026 (Antonelli with four wins to Russell’s one) and tensions bubbled at the recent Canadian Grand Prix with a wheel-to-wheel battle for the lead, heated words from Antonelli over team radio suggesting Russell had been overly robust in his defence, and a car failure for the latter resulting in a DNF, dropping vital points.
The interviews were brief – together with another journalist, we spoke to each driver separately, for around 15 minutes – but it was an interesting fast-shutter-speed snapshot into their respective mindsets as they battle for the world championship title, while working together to keep the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull Racing at bay.
A theme both commented on is energy management – not just of their cars’ hybrid systems but of their own over a 10-month season in 20 different countries. ‘I think energy consumption is very important because we’re constantly back and forth in different time zones,’ Russell says. ‘When I was younger, I wasn’t very good at saying no to things, so I was doing more commitments, more days on the simulator, more days meeting up with people – “Can you come to this dinner?” “Yes, no problem, no problem.” And then suddenly, I’m like, “I’m knackered.” I’ve got to a point where I’m trying to be more self-focused and compromising myself less. And I think that pays dividends when you start getting into race 17, 18 of the season. It’s a long game.’
Antonelli is in only his second F1 season but echoes Russell’s thoughts: ‘[Learning] how to manage your energy through the weekend has made a big difference; last year was all new for me, and this year I know myself much better. Last year I learned a lot about myself – what I need, what I don’t, and how to manage myself better during the race weekend to always be at 100 per cent in the car.’
Antonelli is also adapting to newfound fame in Italy. He says he gets stopped ‘much more often now’ but ‘as long as people are respectful, it’s also very nice.’ He adds: ‘Of course, there are times when you just want to be alone, and moving to San Marino [from his home town of Bologna, at the end of last year] was good because I got my own space and I can relax. But I still go back to Bologna and see my friends; we go for dinner outside and it’s good.’
Russell, meanwhile, has been in the public eye for longer and has stopped looking at social media. ‘I always have this mentality: is this going to make me go faster on the track? Seeing a positive piece of press, or a nice comment, or a nice photograph, is nice, but it doesn’t make me go fast on track. On the flip side, you see negative press, or bad comments, whatever it may be – that also doesn’t make me go faster on the track.’ Although he writes the captions and chooses the pictures for posts on his social channels himself, he has somebody else to upload them and manage the accounts: ‘I’m not doomscrolling on Sunday night after a race.’
Likewise, Antonelli keeps his circle small and talks about how he works to form a bond with his mechanics and engineers. ‘I’ve got an incredible team at Mercedes; I’ve been with them since 2018. They took me into the programme when I was 11, about to turn 12.’
The fact Kimi was just 11 years old in 2018 puts his youth into context. There’s an eight-and-a-half-year age difference between him and George. Antonelli says the maturity he shows in his F1 performances is helped by advice from his 62-year-old father, a former racing driver himself who has run his own racing team. ‘He’s been in the sport for more than 30 years, so he’s been teaching me everything he knows and makes sure I keep myself grounded and don’t get carried away by external distractions.’
To the same ends, Russell has been working with a performance psychologist for the last six years or so. ‘For me, it was a game changer,’ he says. ‘I didn't start because I was in a bad place or anything; I started because I felt I wanted some psychological improvements to get the most out of myself on a race weekend and to get the most out of my team. I was a young kid, you know, like Kimi now, going into a team of 1000 people – how do I approach this? How do I approach the media? How do I approach the ups and the downs?’
He describes how having conversations about things as simple as handling nerves before a race, or channelling adrenaline into concentration, have not only sharpened his performance in the car but also given him strategies to deal with the ups and downs of racing and the ‘emotional hangover’ of Mondays after a Grand Prix: ‘If you've won on a Sunday, you’re on such a high, Monday is a fall back to reality and you can feel quite flat because you’ve had all these emotions, fatigue, travel, success. So Monday is tough even after a good race. When you’ve had a bad race, it’s amplified.’
How much free time does an F1 driver actually get to recharge between commitments? Russell: ‘It’s been a very stop-start season [so far, with the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Grands Prix] but since Canada until the summer break, it’s flat-out. I’d probably say I would have half a day off every 10 days, for a four-month block. And then for summer break, we have two weeks off, and winter you’ve got three weeks off.’
Both drivers answer questions thoroughly and intelligently. Russell speaks emphatically, with considered, thoughtful answers, and Antonelli is more animated, with fast, enthusiastic replies.
Famously, Antonelli made his first official F1 appearance in practice at Monza before he was old enough to legally drive on the road. He’s enjoying driving on the road now, and says his dream car is an AMG One hypercar (of which 275 were made, one of them owned by a certain G. Russell): ‘I would love to drive one but I need to win a few world championships before being able to get it. But I love cars in general.’
And racing: his bedroom posters growing up were of Ayrton Senna and Gilles Villeneuve. Antonelli talks animatedly about the famous footage of Villeneuve dragging his Ferrari back to the pits on three wheels at Zandvoort and his battle with René Arnoux at Dijon: ‘Amazing. Two drivers going at each other, like full on. It was great.’ He’d also love to try some historic cars: ‘You know, some V12s, V10s, to feel the difference compared with a modern F1 car.’
George cites the 2004-era F1 cars as being the pinnacle of racing cars: ‘They looked amazing. Light, super-quick. With a bit more downforce they’d be the fastest cars ever. You put slick tyres on them, you’d gain three seconds straight away. I’d love to give it a whirl.’ However, he feels the latest generation of cars is genuinely producing the best racing F1 has seen.
Shortly after the interview, George and Kimi are on track, giving passenger rides to customers in AMG GT racing cars. And shortly after Silverstone, they travel to Monte Carlo for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix. ‘I think this will be the most challenging weekend we as a team will have faced,’ George says. ‘I still believe we have the best car but I don’t think Ferrari are far behind. We’ve got an advantage on the engine but that always becomes sort of nullified around Monaco.’
Kimi concurs: ‘At Monaco basically everything is about qualifying, so it’s going to be important to maximise that. But it’s going to be interesting. Ferrari is going to be very quick because of how their car is, how they set it up. I think they are going to be quick in Monaco. But we’re bringing a few things to help ourselves and hopefully we’re going to be in the ballpark.’
With seven months still to go in the championship, there’ll be many twists and turns to come.
