What we learned from day one of F1's Brazilian Grand Prix

Formula 1's 2026 title might already be officially decided, but that didn't prevent the first day of the Brazilian Grand Prix from being insightful.

Here's everything we learned from Thursday at Interlagos...

Russell's 'exhausted' - and has tallied up bad luck

George Russell is “a bit exhausted” from having to keep picking himself up after a disappointing 2026 season – and having reviewed the year with his team, he’s tallied up only six races without a problem.

The Mexican GP, where he started second but lost his chance of victory to a serious deployment issue on the run to the first corner, was the latest of the 14 races Russell says have been affected by factors outside of his control.

Retirements in Canada and Malaysia are headline examples, but he also had a significant setback in qualifying in China, lost big points with a drivethrough penalty in Monaco and had other engine-related issues hurt him in multiple grands prix - including Belgium where it dropped him into the pack and he crashed out after an incident with Lewis Hamilton.

Russell didn’t speak in the wake of his confirmed title defeat in Mexico a few days ago, where Kimi Antonelli sealed the championship. So Thursday at Interlagos was the first time to hear from him properly.

“When you get kicked to the ground, you pick yourself back up, then you get kicked down again, you pick yourself back up,” he said.

Half-joking, he added: “And I was hoping to do that maybe twice in the season, not every other weekend really!”

Despite the problems, and a lot of criticism being directed Mercedes’ way by his supporters, Russell insisted the team had not let him down, comparing this year’s fast but unreliable car with last year’s reliable one, which finished only fourth in the championship.

Russell was reluctant to put a figure on how much the problems had cost him. He also said he would not simply put his season down to misfortune.

“It’s also important not to be naive and just blame luck for not being victorious,” Russell said.

“You need to look at yourself hard in the mirror, think where you could have done a better job.”

He added: “Altogether, it just hasn’t been the year we wanted.” - Scott Mitchell-Malm

How Haas handled first Ocon exit scrutiny

The Haas team has no choice but to face the media over the question of Esteban Ocon's departure, but today it was very clear that the no further comment line would be rigorously stuck to.

Tuesday evening's statement confirming that he "will no longer compete on its behalf" is as far as it will go. Not that there was any ban om asking questions.

And that doesn't mean he wasn't mentioned, as erstwhile team-mate Ollie Bearman brought Ocon up unprompted in a question about stepping up into more of a leadership role.

"Of course, it’s strange not having Esteban here, and it’s obviously a challenging situation for everybody," said Bearman.

"And I really, really feel for him, I really do feel for him. But, of course, the situation is complicated, and things have changed.

"And I just hope that it doesn’t cause disruption. At least last week, I wouldn’t say that it caused any disruption at all, so, if anything, it’s a positive now that we have Rafa [Camara] in the car for these events, and that is also preparing us as a team for next year."

Team principal Ayao Komatsu will have a small media session tomorrow, so may elaborate. But given how delicate such sudden removals from a race seat can be, it's likely he will continue to be tight-lipped on the subject. - Edd Straw

'Blurry' future impacting Lawson's enjoyment of results

Liam Lawson might have won F1's midfield fights for four straight weekends but he still doesn't know whether he'll be racing in F1 next year.

Red Bull hasn't decided who will drive for Racing Bulls in 2027 with Lawson, team-mate Arvid Lindblad and Mexico FP1 debutant Nikola Tsolov all in contention for two seats.

This uncertainty is beginning to eat away at Lawson's enjoyment.

"It is hard because I think you want to enjoy the good results as much as possible," Lawson said when asked about his demeanour after the race in Mexico.

"For us, technically, we'd had a great race. It was a very, very hard weekend qualifying. Again, we had a great qualifying. Then we obviously had the penalty [Lawson was disqualified for a technical infringement].

"We have a race like that. It takes away from some of that emotion when the rest at the moment is obviously so undecided about my future.

"Obviously, just with all that in the back of your mind, it definitely takes away from some of the results that we've been having recently."

The 24-year-old admitted his future is "pretty blurry at the moment, honestly. Not much indication at the moment". - Josh Suttill

Bearman's warning for Camara

F1 debutant Rafa Camara has the unenviable task of tackling his first grand prix weekend on home soil in front of a passionate, expectant home fanbase – and some famously fickle Interlagos weather.

Camara steps in at Haas a few months earlier than expected as the 2027 signing gets an early chance following the ousting of Ocon. His chance comes at home, in Brazil, on a weekend with a lot of rain forecast.

Who better, then, to help guide him through a baptism of…water…than new team-mate Bearman, who made his own substitute appearance for Haas here a couple of years ago with very mixed results?

“Maybe too fast!” Bearman joked when The Race asked him about what can be learned from his Brazil experience in 2024 when, replacing Kevin Magnussen at short notice on Saturday morning, Bearman was extremely quick but also had an error and incident-filled grand prix.

He called it “one of the craziest races I’ve been a part of” and said a big learning curve was how different driving in the wet in F1 is compared to F2 - which is something Camara may also encounter.

“We don’t have inters outside of F1,” Bearman said. “The wet tyre is very bad, and we see in F1 nobody uses the wet tyre.

“But until you get to F1, you only use the wet tyre, because you don’t have a choice of another wet-weather tyre.

“It’s definitely an interesting experience to run on the inter. It’s a much better wet tyre. The grip is very high. Also, when you lose the car, the grip that you lose is much more than it is on the wet tyre.

“When you’re in F2, you really dance around with the car in the wet. The grip is very, very low.” - SMM

How Ferrari's reacted to Mexico run-in

Charles Leclerc missed media day for very good reasons (the birth of his first child), but no part of him was ever going to feel sad to have avoided facing a barrage of questions about his run-in with Lewis Hamilton in Mexico.

Their opening lap scrap opened the door to a Max Verstappen victory and prompted a rant from Lewis Hamilton about Leclerc's "do or die" mentality.

Hamilton doubled down on that on Thursday in Brazil, agreeing with the notion Leclerc races Hamilton harder than other drivers.

We also learned Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur has planned a crunch meeting with both drivers in Brazil on Friday after Vasseur pointed to a lack of respect after the race to Ferrari's 2000 F1 employees.

Hamilton's made it clear that "I'll never be silenced" so it will be interesting to see the outcome of the meeting.

The team knows one meeting can't solve everything, but it might tell us whether it's actually solvable or whether it's another chapter in Hamilton and Leclerc's increasingly tense relationship. - JS

How Cadillac's reacted to huge Bottas crash

Cadillac has reverted to older-spec suspension parts and lowered its temperature limits after Valtteri Bottas’s high-speed crash in the Mexican GP.

Bottas said the failure on the front left of the car was caused by heat from the brakes reaching the wishbone mountings, and spending “too long a time in the red zone” after getting its tolerance levels wrong.

“These things, they shouldn’t happen,” he said. “But again, it happened. The main thing is we understand why.

“We did have certain limits when it comes to temperatures, but we’ve had to review those. So we could really locate exactly what actually broke and why.

“We thought it was safe, but we never tested by running it so long at that temperature.”

As a result, Cadillac has gone back to a previous specification of the wishbone mountings, and has also cut the temperature limits it will run them at.

The cooler forecast - with rain expected - means this should not have a major impact on Cadillac’s performance in Brazil because the temperature limits should not be a critical factor.

The failed parts have gone back to the factory at Silverstone for stress testing, to give the team more accurate temperature limits as Bottas says Cadillac needs “some good redesigning for the future”.

Bottas himself is fine for this weekend’s grand prix. He hurt his right leg when it struck the steering wheel as the car went into the wall backwards but it was only a muscle bruise and back to normal after a couple of days. - SMM

...and Honda has countermeasures too

Honda has brought countermeasures to the Brazilian Grand Prix as a precaution after its double-DNF fiasco early in last weekend’s Mexico race.

Aston Martin's embattled engine partner had an unexpected fragility badly exposed at high altitude in Mexico, where both cars retired after just five laps.

This related to the combination of altitude and heat, which Honda’s energy recovery system cooling set-up was inadequate at dealing with in special circumstances like slow prep laps in qualifying or the formation lap to the grid.
Brazil is another of F1’s higher-altitude races, though not as severe as Mexico.

Aston Martin does not believe the issues will be repeated anyway but Honda has decided to make some changes on both the hardware and software side to “improve our robustness in that condition”, trackside boss Shintaro Orihara said. - SMM

Gasly hopes his penalty sets a precedent

Alpine lost a double points finish in Mexico because both its drivers committed yellow flag infringements, handing seventh place to its nearest rival in the constructors' championship, Racing Bulls.

Both drivers apologised after the race even as Gasly explained, it was a tricky set of circumstances.

"I think the circumstances of it wasn't very easy because the crash [Arvid Lindblad collided with Oscar Piastri] happened right in front of us," Gasly said.

"So I think the double yellow was right as I was at the apex of T1 and I didn't really go back on throttle which makes me slow down and obviously to me, [that was] some actions.

"Unfortunately it wasn't enough for the stewards to be comfortable with it. So yeah, not great."

That prompted Gasly's penalty for not obeying a single waved yellow but he also got one for disobeying the subsequent double-waved yellow flag: "[The] panel didn't quite work", according to Gasly, who says it was changing between yellow and green.

But while Gasly thinks it's unfortunate he's not going to argue the penalty, instead he hopes it's the standard the stewards apply in future cases.

"I've always pushed myself to be strict on these yellow flags because it's safety related," Gasly said.

"So that's why I'm not going to even argue the penalty. On that situation it was really safe. Lindblad's car was completely to the right. I could see where it was.

"But nonetheless if you have a yellow flag in Monaco, in Vegas, these type of tracks, we should always slow down. And that's why to me I was wrong. And there's no arguing about it.

"The question on consistency, I think to me it's quite clear on what needs to be done and what I haven't done.

"Now we've got a good example of what's not tolerated in a race condition. I just expect the same for any other driver going forward." - JS