Russell ‘beyond frustration’ but certain he can fight back against Antonelli

George Russell says he is in a weird state of mind as he believes recent results have been lost for circumstances outside of his control after failing to score in the Monaco Grand Prix.

Kimi Antonelli won his fifth race in a row in Monaco to open up a 66-point lead over Lewis Hamilton, who moved ahead of Russell into second place in the drivers’ championship. Russell failed to score after being given a drive through penalty for not serving a five-second time penalty correctly during a pit stop, and he says he should have been able to salvage a podium after a poor qualifying performance.

“I'm beyond frustration now,” Russell said. “It's just struggling to comprehend how on earth this season has panned out and the way it has done. The team tell me there's nothing I did wrong with the speeding in the pit lane - software issue, we don't know where from – five second penalty, not ideal, but not the end of the world. And obviously the drive through for not serving it properly, when I was in P3.

“Two weekends in a row, 40 points down the drain.

“[Qualifying] was a bad day for me, and I accept that, but the result of the last two races, I wish I could take some responsibility for the car breaking down in Canada or the penalties [on Sunday], but it's been completely outside of my control, and that is an incredibly difficult pill to swallow.

“I don't ever really believe in good luck or bad luck, but when I look at the season as a whole, leading the race in Canada, break down. Could have been on the podium [in Monaco], zero points. Leading the race in Japan, Safety Car came out ten seconds after my pit stop. There's not a lot, and the whole season could look totally different. Now I’m 70 points off the lead.”

Despite the gap of nearly three race victories to Antonelli, Russell says he takes heart from the comeback mounted by Max Verstappen against the McLaren drivers in 2025.

“No it’s not [too big a deficit], you look at Verstappen last year,” he said. “But I need to get myself out of… I don’t know how the hell I keep on ending up in the same position. There are things I can improve, for sure, but I know on clean weekends what I can do.”

Russell continued to rue his luck despite admitting after qualifying that his driving style was not working with the Mercedes car at present, saying he believes he has the capacity to match Antonelli.

“I'm in a very weird state of mind because I've had very low moments in my career where I've maybe had a run of two bad races or three bad races on my own personal performance; I've never had a run of bad luck as such like this,” he said. “It didn't happen when the car was a P7 car two years ago or a P4, P3 car last year. Now I've got the car, it feels very painful, but there's a long way to go. I still very much believe in myself. I still believe we're going to be fighting for race wins to the end of this year. There's no reason why we won't be continuing into next year, but right now it's tough.

“100% [can still take the fight to Antonelli]. When I look at things objectively, if things were to balance out a little bit more, I still think it would be very, very close because he's doing an amazing job. But yeah, I think I'd have at least two more victories to my name.”