George Russell needed space after Mexico turned into a nightmare double-punch: a deployment issue killed his race, and teammate Kimi Antonelli clinched the title. Russell qualified P2, nine-thousandths off pole, but the glitch at the start sent him backward into contact with Isack Hadjar. The 10-second penalty dropped him to sixth. He skipped media duties entirely, opting for "a nice dinner" over post-race obligations. The frustration runs deeper than one bad Sunday—Russell catalogued 14 races this season derailed by reliability problems, triple the typical count. "I need to just get out of here," he told his engineer, calling it a "rubbish season." Six clean races out of 20 is a brutal ratio for a driver who started the year with title hopes. Brazil offers a reset, but Mercedes' W17 has buried Russell's 2026 before he even reaches Abu Dhabi.
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