George Russell slams modern F1: ‘It’s not racing anymore’
The Mercedes star says Formula 1 has lost its edge, claiming races are now decided by qualifying and Turn 1 instead of real competition
By John Smith -- 21 October 2025 - 17:21
...“Right now in F1, it’s a race to Turn 1,” Russell told Sky Sports F1. “There’s no tyre degradation, and there’s only about three tenths between the quickest and slowest car in the top six. Normally, you need at least half a second to overtake. If I came out of Turn 1 in P3, I’d have been on the podium today. But I came out in P6, and I finished P6.”...
...“The thing is, when there’s no tyre degradation, there’s no tyre delta,” Russell explained. “Every track we go to, you need at least half a second to overtake, so that’s why you’re not seeing many overtakes. I don’t even remember the last proper two-stop race.”
He stopped short of criticising Pirelli, acknowledging the difficult balance the tyre supplier faces between durability and spectacle. “Pirelli get a hard time no matter what,” Russell admitted. “When there’s lots of tyre degradation, people complain it’s not real racing. But when there’s none, everyone says it’s boring.
“Realistically, you want a tyre you can push flat out for 15 laps, then it drops off a cliff, and you have to pit again. That’s the perfect world—but it’s easier said than done.”
Russell added that while the current generation of tyres has improved consistency, it’s come at the cost of entertainment. “This tyre is very good, but it causes bad racing,” he said...
...The Briton doesn’t see much changing over the final five rounds of 2025, with the Mexico City Grand Prix, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi all expected to produce similar one-stop contests.
“Qatar and Vegas are our best shots, but again, it’s all about qualifying,” Russell added. “If you do a strong lap and start on the front row, you can hold position. If not, it’s the same story — the race is decided by Q3.”
Russell’s comments highlight a growing concern shared by several drivers: that Formula 1’s current regulations have narrowed the field so much that races lack unpredictability. As teams already look toward 2026’s new rules, Russell’s remarks underline the urgency for a format that rewards creativity, not just clean starts.
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2026 is about cementing F1's commitment to The New Green Religion. There's not a chinaman's chance that they'll get that right and unscrew the regulations they themselves were responsible for screwing up in the first place.
One way to make the racing more exciting is to change the DRS deployment from a one second gap to a fixed number of deployments per race at the driver’s discretion.
That would make it more like the Push-to-Pass system Indycar uses on its road courses. A driver could use it to catch up to a leader, and the leader can use it to defend against a takeover.
A second way to encourage more overpasses is to increase the effectiveness of DRS so that a larger advantage is given to the following car, and increase the minimum gap for deployment from 1 second to 1.5 or 2 seconds.