boycotting the doomposting
okay but i keep seeing people saying "well if the battery issue is still there in Hungary then it's over" and i'm begging some of you to remember what sport we're watching.
if Mercedes really did identify a battery deployment issue at Spa, why are we talking like they're just... going to leave it there?
gang, this ain't some midfield team fighting for P9. We are talking about Mercedes, about bloody top team for christ's sake.
Mercedes. They have two drivers in the top three of the Drivers' Championship. They are in the middle of a Constructors' Championship fight, no longer as comfortable because Ferrari is breathing down their neck.
Let's take a look around and think, do we seriously think Mercedes is going to look at telemetry that says "our car is hemorrhaging performance on the straights because of a deployment issue" and then go "damn. that's crazy"
Their entire job between Spa and Hungary is figuring out what went wrong.
Because here's what people are forgetting:
if the deployment issue is real, it isn't just costing George. It's costing Mercedes.
Every point, every position, every chance in the standings, every million in prize money. And, unlike us, Mercedes has hundreds of engineers whose literal full-time job is solving exactly these kinds of problems.
This is Formula 1. They don't shrug and hope it magically gets better. They are expected to investigate, to compare telemetry, to replace components, to rewrite software, to run simulations, to do whatever is needed to bring it home. These people stay at Brackley until someone figures out why the car isn't deploying energy properly.
The reason? Simple enough: they cannot afford not to.
And can we also stop acting like Hungary is going to be Spa 2.0 before a single practice session has even happened?
We have absolutely no evidence that the issue is unresolved.
The next meaningful data point is Friday practice. Not TikTok, not doomposting.
Friday. And even then, practices aren't always a true reflection of the status quo.
If Mercedes still looks crippled on the straights? Okay, then we panic.
Until then, all we know is that they have a week to fix a problem that is threatening both championships.
And, looking at the bigger picture, once again asking y'all to stop acting like the sport happens in a vacuum, speaking of championships...
Mercedes cannot afford to hand Ferrari another weekend because they're too busy having an identity crisis. This isn't just about George vs. Kimi anymore. This is slowly becoming Mercedes vs. Ferrari.
If Ferrari keeps taking chunks out of the Constructors' lead while Mercedes is tripping over reliability issues, suddenly Toto isn't managing a comfortable internal title fight anymore, okay? He's managing a team that could lose both championships.
And if you think Mercedes is willing to sacrifice the Constructors' Championship because "well, at least Kimi is still leading the Drivers'," I genuinely don't know what to tell you. We've always said it, the thing about Toto favoring Kimi is about money and it has always been about money and it would continue to be about money. And perhaps this time capitalism can do us a solid.
Because constructors' points pay the bills. They're the prestige, they're the money. They're the thing every single person back at Brackley is working for. They are not going to willingly throw that away.
Which is exactly why i'm not treating Spa as "this is how the rest of the season will go" because Spa was one weekend. A horrific one, yes. The worst possible combination of events. George had a deployment issue and retired while Antonelli won.
I said in the last manifiesto, you literally cannot design a worse points swing if you tried.
However, that doesn't automatically make it the new normal.
And if Mercedes fixes the issue before Hungary? We're right back where we've been all season:
Two Mercedes drivers, one fast car and a bloody championship fight.
And before anyone starts writing George's obituary because he looked devastated after Spa...
Once again I ask you, have we met George Russell?
Of course he looked devastated! Our boy just watched a 25-point swing happen in the worst possible way but bro that does not mean he's packing up and accepting second place.
George Russell has never, in his entire career, built a reputation for rolling over when things get difficult.
He gets angry, analytical and he goes back to work.
So, until Mercedes proves they can't fix the issue, until Ferrari actually overtakes them, until George actually stops fighting...
I am not declaring the championship over because of one disastrous Sunday.
Now that we've cleared that, let's move on to the next point.
I think everyone needs to separate three different conversations that are getting mashed together into one giant doom spiral.
The first conversation is: did Mercedes have a genuine technical problem at Spa?
From everything that's come out since the race, yes. Obviously.
George's radio wasn't him inventing excuses because he'd had a bad start. He was immediately reporting that the car wasn't deploying properly, that the battery wasn't recharging correctly and that he had no straight-line performance. Toto himself later acknowledged there was a battery deployment issue affecting the car, and George has consistently maintained that the collision wasn't the real story of his race - the technical problem was.
The second conversation is: did Mercedes initially think George's driving style was contributing to it?
Reports after Spa suggest Mercedes spent time looking at whether George's braking and driving style were influencing the energy deployment behaviour before concluding that the explanation was more complicated than simply "George is driving it wrong." Even other teams have been struggling to fully understand the new power unit regulations and the software managing deployment, which makes this look like a systems problem, not just a driver problem.
And that is the part that concerns me. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't.
If the first instinct inside the team is "maybe it's George," when the data eventually points towards a genuine technical issue, that's frustrating. Especially when, publicly, the messaging can make it sound as though George simply isn't extracting the car as well as Kimi.
This is where i think people lose all perspective. Some of you talk about Mercedes as though it's literally just Toto Wolff sitting in a dark room deciding the fate of the championship.
it isn't. Toto is the Team Principal and yes, he is incredibly influential because he is the public face of the operation.
But he he also answers to people.
Mercedes is a manufacturer-backed Formula 1 team with executives, shareholders, board members and a company that expects results. Toto's public messaging and the internal technical discussions are not automatically the same thing. Team principals routinely simplify, protect information or shape narratives in public because that's part of the job. What gets said in a media pen on Sunday afternoon is not a transcript of what gets discussed in the engineering room on Monday morning or explained to other people involved,
And let's be completely serious for a second. Mercedes has Ferrari sitting right there in the Constructors' Championship. Yes, they have George third in the Drivers' and they have Kimi leading the Drivers' and they have a car capable of winning races, but Lewis is right there underneath Kimi and that is fucking lewis hamilton. Leclerc is also not that far behind from George, so any more fuck-ups and a good weekend for Ferrari could move Kimi to second and Charles to third.
there is absolutely no universe in which Mercedes willingly accepts another weekend where one of their title contenders is crippled by a known deployment problem.
That doesn't mean they'll fix it overnight. Formula 1 isn't magic, but it does mean they will throw every available resource at understanding it, because this stopped being "George's problem" the second it started costing Mercedes points.
If George loses points, Mercedes loses points. If George is compromised, Ferrari gets closer. If Ferrari gets closer, suddenly Mercedes isn't managing a comfortable internal championship battle anymore - they're fighting for both titles.
That's not a situation any serious Formula 1 team accepts lightly.
I disagree, however, when people immediately make the leap from "this could hurt Mercedes in Hungary" to "therefore George's championship is basically over"
Those are not the same statement.
Because if we're following the logic all the way through, then we also have to follow the consequences all the way through. And yes I'll repeat myself again because fuck it let it stick.
If Mercedes has identified a deployment problem that is costing them tenths on the straights, then that problem has just become the single biggest priority at Brackley.
Not because George fans are upset, but because Mercedes cannot afford another Spa.
This is the part I think everyone keeps forgetting.
Spa didn't just hurt George. Spa hurt Mercedes.
Every point George failed to score is a point Mercedes failed to score. Every position George lost is another opportunity handed to Ferrari. Every weekend where one of your title contenders is driving around with compromised deployment is another weekend where your Constructors' Championship lead starts evaporating.
Ferrari do not care whether Mercedes' issue is electrical, software-related or caused by a gremlin living inside the battery. They'll happily collect the points anyway.
And that's exactly why I don't buy the idea that Mercedes is just going to rock up to Hungary with the exact same unresolved issue.
This isn't a midfield team saying "we'll probably get around to it."
This is a manufacturer fighting for two world championships.
People sometimes forget how Formula 1 actually works between races. Brackley doesn't just go quiet until Thursday. There are engineers going through telemetry, comparing data from both cars, running simulations, testing software, checking components, trying to isolate exactly what happened. If they believe they've found something that's costing them performance, they'll throw an enormous amount of effort at understanding it because that's literally what the factory exists to do.
And yes, before someone says it, I know what everyone's worried about.
The race debrief and Toto's comments initially leaned towards George's driving style as part of the explanation.
That concerns me too, but here's the thing:
What Toto chooses to say into Sky Sports' microphone five minutes after a race is part of managing a Formula 1 team. Team principals protect information, calm situations, defend drivers, criticise drivers, and sometimes shape narratives before the investigation is complete.
Inside the factory, the only thing that matters is the telemetry.
If the data says the deployment system wasn't behaving correctly, nobody in the engineering room cares about maintaining a media narrative. They care about making sure it never happens again.
Because if they don't, Ferrari isn't going to politely wait while Mercedes sorts itself out.
There is absolutely no incentive for Mercedes to let that happen. If anything, Ferrari's proximity should make Mercedes more ruthless about fixing every weakness they can identify.
And then there's George himself, this is honestly the bit that confuses me the most when i read people's reactions and what takes me to the third conversation:
why are we acting like George Russell is waiting for someone to rescue him?
I've said in the past long ass post but, seriously, have we watched the same driver for the last several years?
George isn't some terrified academy driver who's grateful just to be here, he's not waiting for the adults to to let him play.
He's a multiple Grand Prix winner, he's led this championship, he's beaten world champions over a season, he's been part of Mercedes long enough to understand exactly how the team works, he knows the politics, he knows the engineering structure, he knows who to talk to, he knows how to push internally, he knows when to be diplomatic and when to make it very clear that something is unacceptable -
Do you honestly think he's sitting at Brackley going, "well, that's unfortunate. i guess i'll just accept being blamed and move on." Do people genuinely believe he's sitting at Brackley going, "well, if Toto says it's my driving then I guess that's that"?
I guarantee you that right now that man is buried in debriefs, telemetry, simulator sessions and engineering meetings asking exactly why his car behaved the way it did and exactly how they stop it happening again.
Because that's who our driver is. He is analytical to a fault.
He has built an entire Formula 1 career on understanding problems and trying to solve them. And honestly? I think Spa might end up becoming a bigger turning point internally than people realise.
George's radio after the retirement was raw because this wasn't just another disappointing Sunday. This was another championship swing after a season where reliability and technical issues have repeatedly hurt him. Publicly, more people - including journalists and fans who aren't George supporters - are starting to acknowledge that these setbacks haven't simply been driver errors.
Pressure matters, not just on drivers. It affects the teams, the narratives, the inner management, the money at play.
If George starts receiving broader support because the evidence keeps pointing towards technical issues rather than poor driving, Mercedes cannot simply ignore that forever. Not because of social media, but because internally they need the confidence of both sides of the garage if they're going to win championships.
And that's the final thing i want people to remember. Let it become a fucking mantra that we are not supporting George because we feel sorry for him. We're not saying, "poor George, maybe Mercedes will finally throw him a bone."
We're supporting George Russell because we know exactly what kind of driver he is. We know how hard he works, how he responds when things go wrong. We know for certain that he doesn't disappear after setbacks.
He pushed back and he fights and he has always made himself impossible to ignore, always making hoes mad.
And we know that if Mercedes gives him a car that functions the way it's supposed to, he's perfectly capable of making this championship very uncomfortable for everyone who's already engraving Kimi's name on the trophy.
That's why i'm not declaring the season over. Not because i'm ignoring the problems, but because i'm acknowledging all of them
I don't believe George Russell, Mercedes, or a championship-winning Formula 1 team are the sort to simply shrug their shoulders and accept them.
This entire post takes me to the video that inspired me to write it:
I'd also add something else, because I think the TikTok is correct about the concern, but it quietly jumps over a few steps before reaching the conclusion.
The creator points out that Hungary has several long acceleration zones where electrical deployment matters a lot. That is true. If Mercedes leaves Spa with exactly the same battery deployment issue they had last weekend, Hungary could absolutely expose it again.
That is a legitimate concern and yes, it only weakens the statistics of possibility for a GR1.
So yes, the TikTok is right to highlight Hungary as a circuit where deployment could matter. It's right to say that another compromised weekend would be a serious problem.
Where I part ways with the doomposting is the assumption that because something happened once, Mercedes will simply allow it to happen again.
Nothing about how a championship-winning Formula 1 team operates suggests that's a reasonable expectation. If Hungary arrives and the issue is still there, then we'll have a very different conversation.
But until Friday gives us evidence that Mercedes has failed to solve it, I'm not going to assume one disastrous weekend has suddenly become the permanent state of the 2026 season.
And that's not optimism for optimism's sake.
That's simply giving a championship-contending Formula 1 team credit for doing the thing it's paid hundreds of millions of dollars to do: identify problems, fix them, and come back stronger.
And there is one more thing I think we need to consider when we're talking about the championship narrative: people get bored.
I know that sounds ridiculous when we're talking about a World Championship, but it genuinely matters.
Because the current narrative is supposed to be Kimi Antonelli is the unstoppable new generational talent and if George Russell is constantly missing from the fight because of technical problems, bad luck or incidents that take him out of races, then we are not actually getting to see the thing that makes a championship compelling: the fight.
Kimi winning is impressive. Obviously it is, it is easy to sell, to be at awe for.
But a driver dominating while the person who is supposed to challenge him is repeatedly absent from the actual battle creates a very different kind of narrative from Kimi beating George wheel-to-wheel every Sunday.
There is a reason the most popular race of the season was Canada.
Because car 63 was actually there, because they were fighting, because there was tension.
Because we actually got to watch the championship contenders interact on track instead of simply looking at the final standings and going, oh, Kimi won again.
And this is something that I think people are underestimating about the current championship narrative.
George being MIA is bad for George, obviously. But it is also bad for the narrative of Kimi as an unstoppable racing god.
Because if George is constantly compromised, if he is losing points through reliability problems, if he is retiring before the fight can happen, then Kimi's dominance becomes harder to evaluate. Especially if other teams can't fight it out every weekend.
We are not seeing Kimi having to repeatedly fight George for position. We are not seeing George putting him under pressure over an entire race distance. We are not seeing them battling wheel-to-wheel. We are not seeing Kimi having to defend a championship lead from a driver who is actively in his mirrors.
And I think people are going to get tired of that. Not necessarily because they dislike Kimi, but because sport needs conflict.
A championship needs the person chasing the leader to actually be present.
There is a reason the races where George and Kimi have actually had to fight each other have generated so much more conversation. There is a reason Canada became such a defining weekend for the season. It gave people what they wanted to see: the two Mercedes drivers actually racing each other.
And if George starts showing up consistently again? If he starts putting Kimi under pressure?
Then suddenly Kimi is no longer simply the driver collecting wins while George is somewhere in the background dealing with another problem.
He becomes the championship leader who has to defend his lead. He becomes the driver who has to deal with George Russell actively hunting him, he himself becomes a much more interesting story to root for. In my OG till the math ain't mathing manifiesto I also wrote:
"I am deeply unimpressed by Kimiās success. I feel nothing about it. I do not deny that he is good, but I do not see a story worth rooting for. I am yet to see him race someone without the other person DNFing, having issues or being fucked over by their team. The day Kimi wins a race on fair conditions Iāll recognize it as his first win. So far, according to me, he has had every win handed to him, or, at least, facilitated by Georgeās issues. For me, achievement without struggle isn't compelling.
So I want Kimi to take care of himself, to be in the right headspace, to reach flow state in that car of his, one nowhere close to the Williams that his teammate once dragged to points over and over. I hope that Kimi follows his routine, that he feels good about himself, that he learns about his mistakes, that he listens to Bono.
And I wish the same for George, because I trust him, because I donāt think that he can only win when everyone else is losing due to things out of their control.
Everything that has happened, itās all plot device. Itās all material for future edits of how George did it."
So, yes, I want Mercedes to fix the deployment issue because I want George to score points. Obviously. But I also want them to fix it because this championship is better when George Russell is actually in it.
And I think everyone knows that, whether they want to admit it or not. Because if you hate him, it makes the race more exciting to watch him fail because he failed. Because if you like him, it makes the race more exciting to watch him win. Life of a showgirl what can I say.
I don't want to watch Kimi win the World Championship by simply accumulating points while George is repeatedly taken out of the equation. And, honestly, I don't think that's what Kimi's own fans who believe him want either because it discredits him.
I want to see George Russell race him. I want to see George close the gap. I want to see Kimi under pressure. I want to see George have to fight for every single point.
I want to see what happens when the supposedly unstoppable generational talent has a World Championship contender in his mirrors who has nothing left to lose.
This brings to relevance another extract from the og manifiesto because I really did fucking reach flow state with it:
"And this year, when it looked like it could be his to claim, I remember making a prayer. And maybe God listened to be so much that this entire fiasco is my fault. I asked God that I wanted for this season to be proof of how worthy George is of this. Of winning, of holding out hope for, of writing down diary entries after a hideous race.
I didnāt want it to be easy. I still donāt. And honestly, I donāt think thatās what he would want either.
In fact, despite my frustrations and my crash outs, I am glad that he has not been having back-to-back wins as clean as Kimi Antonelli does (for now). Because, the same way I discredit Antonelliās wins as āitās not that Kimi won, itās that George lost, thereās a differenceā well, I bet that, had George been the one on a crazy lucky streak, people would also be fuming at the mouth.
Thank fuck that it hasnāt been easy for George Russell.
Thank fucking God that it looks terrible for him, beyond over. They say that God writes straight in crooked lines. And I know it in my soul that is the case with George Russellās first world title.
That it wasnāt handed to him. That he had to claw his way to it. That he wasnāt the favorite. That he had been marked as the next Mark Webber. That the Netflix script was already a Kimi Antonelli spin off. That there will be no proof of the Mercedes social team having given him the same support as to his teammate.
There will be hundreds, thousands of comments in all platforms, in all subreddits about how the narrative never placed him as the protagonist, as the hero of the story, as the chosen one. The same content creators who will cover the seasonās ending with George Russell crowned champion will have past videos where they didnāt think that he could make it.
And it will be fucking spectacular."
That is the championship.
And George Russell being constantly absent from the fight is not just frustrating for George fans. It is objectively making the whole thing less interesting.
So, let Mercedes fix the car.
Let George get back into the fight. Let Ferrari keep taking points whenever Mercedes gives them the opportunity. Let the championship become messy. Let the gap close.
Let Kimi actually have to defend this thing.
Because I refuse to believe that the most exciting part of this season is already over, simply because George Russell has been unlucky enough to be absent from too many of the races where he should have been fighting.
People get bored, easy at that.
And the second George Russell starts showing up consistently again, this championship will become interesting again.
Not because George needs to be gifted anything, not because Kimi hasn't done anything to earn his title.
But because a World Championship is not supposed to be a coronation.
It is supposed to be a fight.
And George Russell is not done fighting.
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