Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff insists a new contract is close to being agreed with George Russell in the wake of his victory in the Singapore Grand Prix.
Russell is out of contract at the end of the season and has yet to finalize terms on an extension, despite Wolff saying the current Mercedes line-up will continue into 2026. Russell took his second win of the year in Singapore – a venue where he crashed out of a podium spot in 2023 – and Wolff said the 27-year-old has developed into a driver capable of dominating when given the right machinery.
“I think we’ve seen George in the past with these moments [of mistakes], but not recently, and that’s the step-up that he has made also this year, that these things don’t happen again,” Wolff said. “He was in control of the race, eking out an advantage, managing it when Max [Verstappen] was a bit closer, and there was not at any moment a doubt that there was any risk in his driving.
“He’s been formidable this year. I haven’t seen mistakes. There were weekends that he himself said I could have done more, that 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 the 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.”
Russell’s win came after Mercedes delivered an unexpectedly strong performance throughout the weekend, and Wolff admitted he’s not sure where the pace came from in Singapore.
“You know with these cars, they are just a surprise box,” he said. “If you ask McLaren why the last three races haven’t gone [as well], they would probably struggle for answers. In the same way, Max coming back and then lacking performance again [on Sunday], and the same with the Ferraris oscillating between success and failure.
“It’s just that the margins are so small in having the car in the right aerodynamic window, in extracting the maximum mechanical grip without killing the tires, and the sweet spot of the Pirellis, obviously. And it doesn’t always correlate what you see in the virtual world, in the simulations, to what happens on the track.”
