Brundle Defends Russell for Skipping Media After Title Defeat: 'It Was a Step Too Far'

Martin Brundle has said the quiet part out loud about George Russell’s worst day of the season. Russell skipped his mandatory media duties after the Mexico City Grand Prix, Mercedes was fined €5,000 for it, and plenty of people criticised him. Brundle, speaking on Sky Sports News, said he does not blame Russell at all. Asking a driver to stand in front of the press minutes after watching his team-mate win the title he wanted, Brundle argued, was simply a step too far.

What did Russell actually skip?

The post-race media pen, the routine every driver dreads on a bad day and endures on a good one. After the race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, drivers speak to broadcasters and then to the written media before leaving the circuit. That attendance is mandatory unless the FIA grants an exemption, under Article B10.1.4e of Formula 1’s sporting regulations, The Race reports. Russell did not attend, and he did not attend the stewards’ hearing that followed either. Mercedes had given him permission to go, but permission from the team is not permission from the governing body, and that distinction cost the team €5,000. The fine fell on Mercedes as the competitor, not on Russell personally, which is why team principal Toto Wolff could sound almost relaxed about paying it.

Why was Russell in that state?

Because the race was his season in miniature, and he knew it. Russell started from the front row and suffered an unexpected lack of energy deployment on the opening straight that sent him backwards, The Race reports. He then collided with Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar on the opening lap, picked up a 10-second penalty for it, and finished sixth. While he was recovering from all of that, his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli took a podium and the drivers’ championship, becoming Formula 1’s youngest champion. Brundle’s framing of that arc is sympathetic but unsparing: Russell waited years at Williams as a Mercedes junior for his chance in the works team, got it just as Mercedes stopped winning, then watched a dominant early 2026 car fade while a 20-year-old team-mate transformed from a liability in year one into a generational talent in year two. The arithmetic that pointed to Antonelli’s coronation had been visible for weeks, but arithmetic does not soften the afternoon it comes true.

What did Brundle actually say?

He said Russell is broken, and he said the press should understand why. Brundle told Sky Sports News: “George didn’t want to face the media straight after the race; don’t blame him.” He pointed out that Formula 1 gives the press more access to its drivers than almost any other sport, and that this time the access asked too much, too soon. His imagined version of the pen explains the point better than any policy argument: “How do you feel, George? And, ‘Is this the end of the road for you?’” Brundle said he would happily pay €5,000 himself not to face that at his lowest ebb, and called that fair enough. It is a former driver defending a current one, but it is also a broadcaster arguing against his own industry’s appetite, which is why the quote travelled.

Did Russell snub Antonelli?

No, and that is the detail that keeps Brundle’s defence from reading as special pleading. Before leaving the circuit, Russell congratulated Antonelli and his family underneath the podium, RacingNews365 reports. Wolff called it a great show of sportsmanship and noted that Russell had been responsible for bringing the young driver into the team. Crash.net adds that Wolff apologised to Russell after the race and admitted Mercedes had let him down, saying the car did not work for him this year and that the team had to sort it out for him. The contrast is the whole story: Russell honoured the private obligation to his team-mate and skipped the public one to the press, and his team backed the first choice while paying for the second.

What does the fine actually mean?

Less as a punishment than as a price, at least in Wolff’s telling. Wolff said he saw Russell on the FIA scales after the race and that he was obviously distraught, The Race reports. He called it a catastrophic moment for a racing driver, said the race was a picture of Russell’s season, and said not doing the media work was absolutely understandable, adding that Russell staying would actually have surprised him. That is a team principal publicly absorbing a fine rather than disciplining a driver, and it sets the tone for the rest of the season: Mercedes will pay for Russell’s worst afternoon rather than make him relive it on camera. It is also not Russell’s first brush with the stewards this autumn: he started the Singapore Grand Prix from the back of the grid after Mercedes fitted a new engine, a penalty imposed on the car rather than the driver but one that shaped his weekend all the same. Whether the FIA sees it that way in future is a different question, since the regulation exists precisely to stop teams excusing their own drivers.

What happens next?

Sao Paulo, and a paddock that will be watching both the stopwatch and the media pen. The Brazilian Grand Prix this weekend is the next race, and Russell arrives fourth in the title fight with his season’s defining disappointment still fresh. The Mexico weekend left more than one briefing-room argument behind it: Wolff has already dismissed talk of Mercedes favouritism as brainless, and Verstappen and Hamilton have questioned whether sprints belong on tracks where cars cannot pass. Russell’s absence will not be the biggest story of the Sao Paulo weekend, but it will be the test of Brundle’s argument. If Russell faces the press in Brazil and answers the hard questions, the Mexico absence reads as one terrible afternoon. If he does not, the €5,000 fine starts to look like the first instalment of something larger.