Has Russell become F1’s next best driver after Verstappen?

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“I feel ready to fight for a championship.”

That was what George Russell, unprompted, told the media after claiming a surprise victory for Mercedes at the Singapore Grand Prix last weekend.

The focus going into the weekend had been on whether Max Verstappen had brought himself back into a 2025 title race led by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

But as he seems to do whenever Mercedes give him a car capable of challenging his rivals, Russell crashed the party to deliver two laps good enough for pole position at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, before calmly controlling the race to claim the fifth grand prix victory of his career.

The win carried added significance for Russell, with it coming at the scene of one of the worst moments of his F1 career, a crash in the closing stages of the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix when he was running third and trying to chase down Norris and then-Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.

Having achieved what he clearly viewed as a form of redemption, Russell took the opportunity to reassert what he believes is his standing in the sport.

“I’m a very different driver today to the one I was a couple of years ago,” the 27-year-old Brit said. “And I feel more complete, more confident. I know exactly what I need to do in given circumstances.

“Of course, I was nervous before the race as you’d expect, but I didn’t feel any additional nerves or any additional pressure. It just felt like another race, and I knew I had a chance to win, and I felt comfortable with that.

“I’ve said it for a while – I feel ready to fight for a championship. I feel ready to take it to my next step.”

Contract wait goes on for ‘formidable’ Russell

While Russell has never appeared to be short of confidence, it’s understandable that he would feel the need to self-promote after what he has been through in 2025.

Russell has performed at a very high level since joining Mercedes in 2022, outscoring Lewis Hamilton in two of their three seasons as team-mates before the seven-time world champion left to join Ferrari.

This year, put alongside Kimi Antonelli, the Italian teenager who was fast-tracked into the team after being billed as a generational talent, Russell has finished ahead of his team-mate at all 18 grands prix and has outscored the 19-year-old by 237 to 88 points.

Those performances weren’t enough to establish Russell as Mercedes chief Toto Wolff’s first choice to lead the team into 2026’s new generation of rules, under which many expect the Silver Arrows to return to championship contention for the first time since they won the last of a streak of eight successive constructors’ titles in 2021.

Wolff has instead been focused on trying to poach Verstappen from Red Bull, with Russell telling Sky Sports F1 in June that he believed an extension to his contract was being delayed by Mercedes’ pursuit of the Dutchman.

Verstappen announcing in late July that he would stay with Red Bull until at least the end of the 2026 season appeared to ensure Russell will remain with Mercedes for at least one more year, but more than two months later, a deal has yet to be done.

Wolff told Sky Sports F1 in Singapore that a deal is “super near” to being finalised, and anything other than Mercedes retaining their current line-up in 2026 would be an enormous surprise.

However, it felt somewhat pointed when Wolff was asked at his post-race press conference in Singapore whether he believed Russell had been the best driver on the grid this season.

The Austrian replied: “He’s been formidable this year. I haven’t seen mistakes. There were weekends that he himself said, ‘I could have done more, and it wasn’t a good race’.

“But this happens with any driver. You can see when it just merges, the car being in a perfect space, and the driver being on top of things, that becomes a dominant formula, and that is what we’ve seen here.

“Contract-wise, good things take a while, it’s about the detail, and it’s not about the big topics.”

Is Russell the best of the rest?

While you’d be hard pushed to find anyone in the F1 paddock who would argue anyone other than Verstappen is currently the best driver on the grid, it remains up for debate whether the gap between him and Russell is big enough to justify the potential unease caused by the situation.

Not only has Russell been undermined by his team’s apparent prioritisation of Verstappen, but it also remains to be seen how the Dutchman and his camp would fit into a structure at Mercedes that differs from a Red Bull setup that has been shaped around him.

It’s very difficult to compare the performance of drivers unless they are team-mates, but Russell has enjoyed a similar level of dominance within his own team this year as Verstappen.

The Dutchman has dropped several hints during the season that he believes he would have been dominant in the McLaren that Piastri and Norris won 12 of this year’s first 15 grands prix in.

Russell’s repeated early season comments that McLaren had one of the most dominant cars in the sport’s history perhaps also reflected frustration that he felt having a car like the MCL38 would bring him a maiden world championship.

Three-time W Series champion and Sky Sports F1 pundit Jamie Chadwick, who knows Russell well having come through the British motorsport ranks at the same time, believes he has developed into a “complete driver”.

“I think now he’s able to develop into this driver that can kind of do it all,” Chadwick said on the latest episode of Sky Sports’ The F1 Show. “I think we talk a lot about how Max is that kind of complete driver but I do think George is coming into that.

“There’s this category of racing driver that has got the ability to qualify, race wheel-to-wheel, not crash, perform under pressure and there’s very, very few of them at the moment, but I would 100 per cent put George up there in that category.”

While it’s clear that the closely matched Piastri and Norris are both talented, there have been moments during their title battle to suggest that neither is anywhere near a match for Verstappen.

Some might argue that Hamilton or his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc should be in the conversation, but on current form, neither comes close to the consistency shown by Russell.

While there seems to be a decent chance Russell will get the opportunity in 2026 to prove that he’s a championship-calibre driver, only Mercedes pairing the Brit with Verstappen in 2027 would provide a definitive answer to just how good he is.

F1’s title race now heads back to North America, with the United States Grand Prix in Austin up first on October 17-19 live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime

This news was originally published on this post .

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