A few things about Jonathan McEvoy and Mercedes because I wanna talk about it
First of all, McEvoy has been in the F1 paddock since 2006 and has covered over 300 races. And that makes his recent coverage of George particularly interesting because we’ve actually seen McEvoy cover a very similar controversy before.
Some of you probably remember what happened in 2024. There was an anonymous email supposedly written by a Mercedes employee accusing the team of sabotaging Lewis in favour of George.
I found two articles McEvoy wrote about it.
He was one of the first journalists to actually report the story. He said he had received another message with similar claims and that a source close to the situation believed the email was broadly accurate. Then he wrote another column basically saying Lewis should leave Mercedes immediately instead of waiting until the end of the season.
But he wasn’t exactly defending Lewis either. He went after him pretty hard too. He criticised his behaviour and body language and even wrote about his “natural inclination to paranoia”. He definitely wasn’t writing as if Mercedes were the only problem.
And that’s why I find what he’s writing about George now so weird. He’s written three columns about George and Mercedes so far and just look at how his tone has changed.
On July 20
“I do not believe for a moment that Russell is being sabotaged from within”
“Deliberately undermined, no”
So no, he didn’t think Mercedes were deliberately doing anything to hurt George.
Then literally ONE WEEK later he published this: “I have proof Mercedes really are giving Kimi Antonelli special treatment over George Russell.”
And
“You think Mercedes want Russell to win as much as they are rooting for Antonelli? I’ll tell you how I know they do not”
And there’s another detail here that I find really interesting. McEvoy said that when he used to write things like this about Lewis and Mercedes, the team would react pretty much immediately and this time nothing.
And then September 8
This article is basically just McEvoy defending George for an entire page
“He is not the team’s favourite child”
“His pretence of the team playing fair is nonsensical”
He also says that a senior figure in F1, someone who has won multiple world championships in one way or another, told him that “the bias towards Antonelli is obvious, and has been for months”
Soooo what the hell did this man hear in those six weeks? 😭 Something clearly changed between those articles and I REALLY want to know what it was
JADE. JACQUET. HISTORY. 🏆💙
Her first F4 win.
Every lap led.
History made.
Jade becomes the first woman to win a race in the overall classification of French F4.