Russell says the new cars reward a certain kind of driver. The reigning world champion says they reward a certain kind of learner.
Formula 1 has a long habit of explaining the opening months of any rule set through the drivers themselves. The cars change, the pecking order shuffles, and within weeks the paddock offers a personality-based reason. This generation suits smooth drivers. That one favours whoever brakes latest. The appeal is obvious: it turns a tangle of aerodynamic, mechanical and software variables into one readable story.
In 2026 the temptation is stronger than usual, because the reset is close to total. The cars are shorter, narrower and roughly 30kg lighter than their predecessors. The wheelbase is 200mm shorter and the tyres are slimmer front and rear. Movable wings on both axles replace the old drag-reduction flap. The power unit now divides its output almost evenly between combustion and electrical energy, and the FIA’s own figures put the downforce reduction at around 30 per cent. When every major variable moves at once, almost any pattern in the results can be made to look like proof of something.
Into that environment stepped George Russell in Madrid, ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit. He offered an explanation for why the order inside several top teams has flipped. Lando Norris was placed on the favoured side of Russell’s dividing line. Asked about it, he declined the compliment.
Russell’s taxonomy
Russell’s remarks, made in his Thursday media session, began with an observation about symmetry. He listed the relationships that defined last season and the previous era: Oscar Piastri’s competitiveness against Norris, Charles Leclerc’s against Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen’s dominance over every team-mate he has had. In 2026, he argued, each of those has bent. Piastri now trails Norris. Leclerc trails Hamilton. Verstappen’s current partner is closer to him than any of his predecessors has been in six years.
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He then supplied a cause. Russell placed himself, Leclerc and Piastri in one family of drivers with fairly similar styles. He said the drivers thriving this year, Kimi Antonelli, Hamilton and Norris, resemble one another in the same way. With this car and these tyres, he said, the trend looked clear.
It helps to see what kind of claim this is. It is not a loose remark about comfort or confidence. It is a taxonomy: two driving families and one rulebook that favours one of them. It also carries an implication that is easy to miss. If the cars reward a type, the drivers on the wrong side of the line are victims of the regulations rather than authors of their own difficulties.
The theory circulated because it has surface plausibility. Antonelli finished last season 169 points behind Russell and now leads the championship. Hamilton, whose struggles in the ground-effect era were well documented, has rediscovered his rhythm at Ferrari, to the discomfort of Leclerc. These are turnarounds that invite a single explanation.
Norris’s reply
Norris was put the theory directly. His answer was neither defensive nor flattered. “I wouldn’t really say my driving style suits this car,” he said. That removed the premise before the debate began. If the car suited him, his job would be to repeat what he already knew. His account of the season is the opposite.
He then offered a replacement explanation: “I think my driving style is good because I’m able to adapt better.” He added that he does not believe any single style is the one that works. The gap between the two positions is more than semantic. Russell treats talent as possession of the right template. Norris treats it as the willingness to put the template down.
He also questioned the grouping itself. He said he does not believe he drives the way Antonelli does. He pointed out that Russell has never been his team-mate, which limits how well anyone can compare from the outside. It is a fair general point in a sport where two similar-looking traces can hide different intentions and different compromises.
Finally, he reached for his own recent history. At the start of 2025, he said, the McLaren suited Piastri a little more. His response was not to wait for the car to come to him. He worked out how to drive it differently, and that produced a stronger second half of the season. This year, he said, the car is not remotely comparable to last year’s machine, so the same process applies again.
A stance with a history
Norris did not invent this position for Madrid. In Hungary, in July, he put it more bluntly. “I’ve had to change my driving style every single year of my life,” he said. He drew a contrast with Russell, saying Russell’s approach has served him for two decades while his own has needed rebuilding since his 2018 test year. He argued that greater experience should make a driver better equipped to adjust. In his view, a driver who cannot adjust to a new car is not at a high enough level. The job, he said, is to drive whatever you are given, good or bad, easy or hard.
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In the same session he disagreed with Verstappen’s view that a driver can make less difference under these regulations. Some corners are neutralised by the energy rules, he said, but most still offer a chance to gain on rivals. He even argued that Hungary’s medium-speed corners were more demanding than before, because higher top speeds and lower grip made them bigger tests.
His Madrid comments added a more reflective note about McLaren. He said drivers have long described its cars as odd and unique, and that he had to change a lot of things at the start of this year to understand the 2026 car. He was careful not to overclaim. He said he could not tell how much of that was a McLaren trait. He was nearly certain, though, that it was mainly the different mechanical balance and the very different tyres. It is an unusually candid answer for a driver, and a reminder that his argument is about process rather than pedigree.
Why the truth is hard to isolate
Part of the reason this debate persists is that the 2026 cars make driver contribution unusually hard to measure. The power units rely on machine-learning software to manage energy deployment. They are so sensitive that a small deviation in one corner can cost several tenths on the next straight. Piastri said in Spa that qualifying sometimes feels decided by computers behaving or misbehaving.
That is why the outside world struggles to separate what the driver did from what the software did. It is also why a tidy theory is attractive. But it means every claim about style, including Norris’s, should be treated as a working hypothesis rather than a proven law.
What the driving analysis says
The most detailed public examination of Russell’s idea so far comes from Mark Hughes of The Race. It supports part of the theory and undercuts the rest.
Hughes accepts that there is almost certainly a causal link between these cars and the struggles of Russell and Piastri. He describes both as drivers who tend to work to a geometric ideal: a late turn-in, an abrupt initial steering input, rotation that comes from the steering rather than from weight transfer, and very little overlap between braking and turning. That approach works brilliantly on high-grip circuits in cars with a great deal of downforce. It works less well as grip falls. The 2026 cars have less downforce and less tyre grip, so more circuits now sit below the point where the technique stops paying off.
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Energy management makes the penalty worse. The less speed a driver carries into a corner, the more the battery recharges on entry, and the shorter the electrical deployment on the following straight. Hughes says Russell and Piastri have both suffered from that in places.
Where he parts company with Russell is the equivalence. He argues it breaks down for Verstappen and Leclerc, whose styles are unrelated to each other’s and to those of Russell and Piastri. Verstappen prefers a car with an extreme front end that lets him rotate the car with little steering. He has the sensitivity to rotation and yaw to tame the exit oversteer that usually comes with such a car. The Red Bull RB22 understeers at low and medium-speed entries, which limits how much that skill is worth. Hughes notes that other cars suggest a pointy front end is achievable under these regulations. Red Bull simply has not produced one.
Leclerc, in Hughes’s account, has always found rotation through an energetic balance of brake, throttle and steering with plenty of overlap. That makes him devastating around short corners and probably the fastest driver anywhere at Monaco, Baku and the Red Bull Ring. Long-corner circuits such as Shanghai and the Hungaroring are harder, because the initial trick is paid for later in the corner. The energy rules have also made some of those tricks nearly redundant.
On the other side of Russell’s line, Hughes finds no single style either. He calls Antonelli, Norris and Hamilton quite distinctive and adaptable. He describes Hamilton’s adjustment to this generation of car, after his ground-effect struggles, as one of the most noteworthy driver stories of the season. Hamilton keeps the Ferrari flatter and calmer than Leclerc on entry, stays capable of braking very late when required, and combines that with a suppleness that avoids overworking the front axle. The Ferrari’s downforce balance helps that approach.
What Antonelli and Norris share, Hughes says, is not a technique but a working method. Both have put in hard hours with their engineering teams to understand the quirks of the cars, and both have built features into their driving tuned to energy management. Antonelli’s throttle use is highly distinctive and seems designed to maximise harvest under braking. His inputs are smooth, and he judges entry grip so precisely that little correction is needed mid-corner. Hughes sees that as the most visible contrast with Russell. Antonelli can still use the late, big-steering entry when grip is high. He seems better at knowing when it is the wrong tool.
Norris, Hughes adds, has long loaded the front of the car progressively and can take whatever line the available grip allows. That approach, like Verstappen’s, tends to fall apart when a car understeers. But it means he suffers fewer exit snaps. He cites Norris turning in shallow from further back at the final corner of the Hungaroring in the low-grip conditions of first practice. Hughes’s conclusion is blunt: Russell and Piastri have to adjust, because the cars are not going to move towards them.
Where Russell’s case stays alive
Russell’s theory cannot simply be waved away, and Norris himself did not entirely try.
Autosport’s assessment of the exchange noted that Norris came close to contradicting himself. But it agreed his central point was strong. The 2026 cars demand counter-intuitive habits, from the restrictions around throttle position to the way they can punish faster cornering. Many drivers ran into that wall early in the season. The productive response, Autosport observed, was to work with the cars’ limits rather than complain about them. The same analysis observed that Russell enjoyed a cushion at the start of the year, thanks to more front-line experience than Antonelli and a far quicker car than anyone else’s. It also concluded that comparing Russell with Antonelli, and the two McLaren drivers with each other, suggests there is some substance to the theory.
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Verstappen has offered his own counterpoint. He noted that Yuki Tsunoda climbed into a Racing Bulls car at Zandvoort and was competitive straight away, with no prior experience of the 2026 machines. That looks like evidence that adjustment can be fast. Autosport observed, however, that Tsunoda then made a mess of Monza by forgetting to activate Straightline Mode during practice and qualifying. Quick adaptation once does not amount to sustained mastery.
Russell’s own record on the subject is also more nuanced than a single quote can capture. In July he said Mercedes had traced his Spa problems to a software calibration issue rather than to driving technique. He said he no longer needed to concentrate on changing how he drove. Autosport reported at the time that some within the team believed a smaller part of the problem could be linked to his driving style, which might have magnified the software anomaly. That reporting is single-sourced and should be treated with caution. But it suggests the September argument is a broader extension of an earlier, narrower diagnosis rather than a reversal of it.
Russell has also invoked style before, when it favoured him. Sports Illustrated reported that he said his natural approach in 2024 suited the ground-effect Mercedes and helped him beat Hamilton in most qualifying sessions. His conviction that fit matters is consistent. What changed is the regulation, and who it flatters.
What Madring added
The Madrid weekend itself supplied fresh material. Hughes describes Russell’s final qualifying run at Madring as emblematic. After two sectors he was within a tenth of Antonelli. By the end of the lap he had lost a further two tenths, almost all of it in the final sector, where his rear tyres were too hot for the repeated 90-degree turns. Hughes traces that to how he had used the tyres earlier in the lap. Russell finished the race fifth, half a minute behind the winner Antonelli, though on a different strategy. Hughes calls it probably the weakest season of Russell’s eight-year career, arriving just as he has a title-calibre car.
Russell himself, per Hughes, places the cause firmly in the mismatch between his natural driving and the demands of this generation of car and tyre.
The championship context
The numbers explain why the argument carries weight. As of 19 September, Russell is second in the drivers’ standings, 81 points behind Antonelli, who has won eight races this year to Russell’s two. Norris is fourth with two victories, Hungary just before the summer break and Zandvoort straight after it. Piastri is seventh, 66 points behind him. These figures change every race weekend and should be checked before publication.
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The most striking swing is at Mercedes, where a 169-point deficit at the end of last season has become a championship lead. At McLaren, Norris arrived at this season as world champion, and his form has held through a very different car.
Why the distinction matters
The disagreement can look like a matter of emphasis. It is not, because the two positions imply different remedies.
If Russell is right, the 2026 cars reward a type of driver. Talent is then partly a question of alignment. Those on the wrong side of the line are best served by a change in the car, the tyre or the regulations, and effort helps only within limits.
If Norris is right, the cars reward a process. Talent then includes the ability to rebuild habits, rework inputs with engineers, and relearn the car as development keeps moving its behaviour. The remedy is work.
Hughes’s analysis suggests the truth is a blend. Technique sets the starting point, and the regulations decide how favourable that starting point is. Russell’s and Piastri’s habits are more exposed by these cars than Antonelli’s or Norris’s. But the drivers who have adapted best did not share one style. They shared a method.
Norris’s standard is also harsher than Russell’s. To say that a driver who cannot adjust is not at a good enough level is a demanding definition of elite performance. It is easy to see why some in the paddock would find it uncomfortable.
What to watch
The most useful evidence in the remaining races will not come from press conferences. It will come from whether Russell’s late-lap tyre temperatures settle in qualifying, and whether his last-sector times close the gap to Antonelli. It will also come from whether Norris and Antonelli, who have built their 2026 form on continual adjustment, can keep adjusting as rivals converge on similar energy solutions.
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Regulations will change again. If Norris’s model is closer to the truth, the drivers who have practised changing will be better placed to change once more. If Russell’s model is closer, the next reset may favour a different family of drivers altogether. Either way, one idea has not survived contact with these cars: that a single way of driving explains who is fast.
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