mirror

Russell said he and his team had analysed the season so far and worked out that he has had a trouble-free run in only six of this season’s 20 races.

“These issues constantly keep popping up but unfortunately this always seems like it’s on my side of the garage,” he said.

“We concluded we’ve only had six races from the 20 where we’ve had a clean weekend. So to think 14 of those weekends have had issues is unbelievable.

“We need to look to understand why that is, if there’s something we are overlooking or if it’s just pure misfortune. At the moment it does seem like it’s more misfortune than anything.

“In a normal season you might have two weekends or three weekends where there are issues. We’ve had three quarters of this season and that has been incredibly unfortunate.”

He said it was the fact that he had been struck by another technical glitch that made him skip his media duties after last weekend’s Mexico City race, rather than the fact Antonelli had just won the title.

Russell, who started second to Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari, had a loss of power on the run to the first corner when the electrical part of the power-unit did not reply properly.

He was swamped by the field, and then collided with Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull at Turn Six, earning himself a 10-second penalty. He finished sixth and dropped from second to fourth in the drivers’ championship, behind Antonelli, Max Verstappen and Hamilton.

“In racing you always pick yourself back up and for me the best way to pick myself back up was getting out of there,” Russell said on media day for this weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

“It was as simple as that, really. I was just very upset with missing out on the chance of a good result because the championship for me was already over but I just couldn’t believe how things had panned out again.

“In that moment, yeah, I just wanted to get out of there.

“I think I’m 99% of the time a true professional and I try not to spit my dummy out, but sometimes missing out on doing the press – OK, it’s not ideal but not the end of the world.

“Moments like that you don’t really want to deal with it.”

Scientists honoured for solving mystery of asymmetric ‘mirror image’ molecules that has helped in manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

Scientists Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for solving a longstanding riddle of asymmetric “mirror image” molecules, a discovery hugely important for pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday the pair – Kagan, 95, from France; and Soai, 76, from Japan – were honoured “for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis”.

Their findings showed how chemical reactions can be driven to favour a single molecular mirror image, work that has been key for chemists who design reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

Many of the molecules essential to life exist in two forms that are mirror images of each other, like left and right hands. Yet living organisms almost exclusively use only one version, a phenomenon known as “homochirality” – from the Greek word for hand – that has puzzled chemists for more than a century.

“The left-handed version of the drug can have one effect, and the right-handed version can have another effect, and then we need methods for selectively preparing them,” said Peter Somfai, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

“In developing such methods, the findings of this year’s laureates are important. They provided powerful tools for that,” he said.

Heiner Linke, chair of the committee, said the two scientists provided “a solution to a chemical mystery that is over a century old: how homochirality can emerge spontaneously”, calling the chemical reactions they developed “spectacular”.

‘Most exciting day’

Soai, speaking by phone to the Nobel Prize news conference, said he had been out shopping when he received the news.

“This is the most exciting day in my life, I am very glad to share this prize with Professor Henri Kagan,” he added.

Last year’s chemistry award went to scientists Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for the development of so-called metal-organic frameworks, molecular constructions that can help tackle challenges such as climate change and lack of freshwater.

The chemistry Nobel is always the third prize to be awarded during Nobel week, following those for medicine and physics.

The literature laureate will be revealed on Thursday, while the keenly anticipated peace prize is due on Friday.

Established in the will of Swedish inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901, with a few interruptions mostly due to the world wars.

Nobel, a chemist by trade, amassed huge wealth in the 19th century from inventions primarily tied to warfare, most notably dynamite. The economics prize is a later addition funded by the Swedish central bank.