Russell at a loss to explain ongoing struggles for pace

George Russell admits he is struggling to work out why he is finding it so hard to extract pace out of his car, after qualifying sixth for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli took pole position in a thrilling session, besting Max Verstappen by less than half a tenth of a second with his final lap. Russell, meanwhile, was just under 0.4s off Antonelli and will start from the third row, and he admits he doesn’t know what’s caused him to lose performance compared to the start of the season.

“I don’t really know what’s going, on to be honest,” Russell said. "It’s clearly something in my driving that’s not helping the car at the moment, but that was there at the start of the year as well, and every lap I did – if I look at Melbourne and at least China until I had my issues – it was P1 in every single session, and every lap I did was good.

“The last three races have just been nowhere; even Canada I was nowhere until the last lap of Q3 in both sessions, so I don’t have an answer for that.

“I went out in FP3 and on my first lap I was four tenths ahead of everybody and everything felt back to normal, and from thereon in it’s just not been the same. So as I said I don’t really have an answer right now. Until I can make some adaptations or adjustments it’s going to continue like this.”

Russell acknowledges that Antonelli drives the Mercedes in a different manner to him, but felt the fact he started the season so strongly shows his approach should be working with 2026’s equipment.

“There’s clearly a difference in driving style between the two of us – which has been there last year as well – which played into my hands very well last year and it’s clearly playing into his hands perfectly well this year. But it still doesn’t answer why I was so good at the start of the year and so poor now, so we need to look at why that is.

“It’s clear in the data, the difference is how we’re driving has such an impact on the tires, and he’s just getting the tires in a nicer window than me, a nicer balance, and the pace is just coming easier for him. I don’t know why that is.

“I’ve got some ideas why it is, but I’ve been driving this manner for my whole career and now for whatever reason it’s not working with this car. Last year’s car Kimi was trying to drive it my way and it was also not working for him.

“So it’s no excuse, it’s just a reality and I need to either work with the team to adjust my driving to compensate these new tires, these new cars, or I need to find a different setup that works for me, but it’s not clicking right now.”