Russell knows he has to step up performance level despite Barcelona rebound

George Russell says his performance in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix was not strong enough and that he needs to make improvements to get back into the title fight.

Mercedes was beaten for the first time this season in Spain as Lewis Hamilton won on a three-stop strategy, beating pole-sitter Russell who two-stopped. Russell had slipped to third behind teammate Kimi Antonelli late in the race before Antonelli retired shortly afterwards, and despite reducing the deficit to the Italian by 18 points, Russell says there were weaknesses that he wants to address.

“I’m going to be honest: I’m not really thinking about the championship,” Russell said. “I’m thinking about just controlling my controllables. And Friday and Saturday I felt like I did everything to the best of my ability and got absolutely the best result possible on almost every single lap I did.

“[In the race], I made a great start. The first stint was solid, but the last two stints on the hard [tire] wasn’t good enough. So, my head is coming out of this race thinking performance was not strong enough and I need to make some improvements.

“It’s a challenging circuit. It’s the first race of the year where we’ve had major tire degradation. You know, the winner on a three-stop strategy [while] the six races prior have been an easy one-stop. So, totally different ballgame. We’ll reassess in Austria. But as I said, I’m going to control my controllables and keep on trying to apply the pressure.”

Given his recent struggles to match Antonelli, Russell admits he was unlikely to be happy whatever strategy Mercedes chose to counteract Hamilton’s threat, in case it hurt his chances of beating the championship leader too.

“Lewis had really great pace. If I was in the race on my own and there was no other drivers and I was doing a two-stop, I would not have pitted on lap 13," he said. "Now, you’re never in the race on your own. You’re reacting to your competitors and they put us in a very challenging position to pit this early.

“The truth is my pace wasn’t quite strong enough, but I do think I could have just mirrored his strategy on the three-stop, but that would have maybe left me exposed to Kimi on the two-stop and maybe I wouldn’t have been happy about that in the end.”