Fears F1 season will be cakewalk as Mercedes blow everyone away
One of the more memorable quotes of last season came here in China, exactly 12 months ago, when George Russell said of Lando Norris’s 2025 McLaren that it was so dominant it “should win every race”.
One of the more memorable quotes of last season came here in China, exactly 12 months ago, when George Russell said of Lando Norris’s 2025 McLaren that it was so dominant it “should win every race”.
Norris, in retaliation, accused Russell of “trying to play mind games” by relentlessly talking up McLaren’s car. “George thinks he can play a lot of games, but I don’t fall for any of them,” he said.
How quickly the tables turn. After watching Mercedes annihilate everyone in the opening race of the 2026 season in Melbourne last weekend, where Russell beat the quickest non-Mercedes car by 15 seconds, and then again in sprint qualifying in China on Friday, when Russell went 0.6 seconds quicker than the next fastest non-Mercedes, Norris referred back to that exchange.
“I can’t remember by how much I won in Melbourne [last year]?” he asked. “One second? I know how everyone talks about how big our gap was last year, but we certainly didn’t get close to winning every race. And they [Mercedes] were certainly a lot closer to us than we are currently to them.”
Was he saying Mercedes should win every race this season? Norris smiled. “They have a big advantage over everyone but that is because they have worked hard and they deserve to be in the position they are in. At the moment you would expect Mercedes to dominate for a while. We will do our best to change that.”
Norris is right about one thing: you would expect Mercedes to dominate for a while. Hopes were high that Ferrari, their closest challengers in Melbourne, might be able to close the gap in Shanghai. And that might still transpire. But so far at least, the Italian team appear as far away as ever.
Ferrari tried out their new “Macarena” rear wing – which flips upside-down – in practice at the Shanghai International Circuit on Friday but eventually decided against it for sprint qualifying. In the end it was Norris and McLaren who pushed Mercedes hardest in that session.
But Norris was still 0.6sec off, which is gargantuan in Formula One terms. To put it in context, Norris and Oscar Piastri were 0.3sec quicker than the rest of the field when they took a one-two in qualifying at the opening race in Australia last year. And they went on to win 14 of 24 races.
Russell and his team-mate Kimi Antonelli, by contrast, were 0.8sec and 0.5sec respectively quicker than anyone else at Albert Park last weekend. And that gap is just to McLaren and Ferrari. Red Bull, who are nominally the fourth-fastest team on the grid, were light years off the pace on Friday. Max Verstappen, in eighth, was 1.7sec slower than Russell, and his team-mate Isack Hadjar was another half a second slower again, highlighting the spread-out nature of the field early in this new era.
It all looks set up for Russell who now finds himself, like Norris here last year, in the position of desperately trying to play down his apparent advantage.
Asked about his compatriot’s comment that his gap is greater now than anything McLaren enjoyed last year, Russell demurred.
“It’s greater, let’s say, front to the midfield and backfield, but it’s not greater compared to the next quickest car, which is Ferrari,” he insisted. “We’re one race down. Teams do have strong races. Teams have weaker races. We’re one race down. That may be our strongest race of the whole season. We don’t know. I hope it’s not, and I hope we can continue the fight, but... you can’t judge these things after one race.”
Maybe not, but if Mercedes continue to blow everyone away in China this weekend, the suspicion will only grow that 2026 is going to be a cakewalk.
Meanwhile, Alpine’s executive adviser Flavio Briatore has confirmed Telegraph Sport’s exclusive from earlier this week that Mercedes F1 are in negotiations with Otro Capital for the American private equity firm’s 24 per cent stake in the team.
[Source: Daily Telegraph]
