George Russell has received brutal criticism from 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve following his latest battle with Kimi Antonelli.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Russell qualified on pole for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix and led into the first corner but was never able to break away from the field.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
He was ultimately overtaken by Lewis Hamilton following a virtual safety car, with the seven-time world champion going on to win by nearly 20 seconds.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
As for Russell, it left the Briton with Kimi Antonelli on his gearbox, resulting in another scrap between the Mercedes team-mates. Russell defended well initially before being overtaken by Antonelli in the closing laps.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Fortunately for the King’s Lynn-born driver, his team-mate suffered a shock retirement with three laps remaining following a mechanical failure, promoting Russell back to second position.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The result saw Russell gain 18 points on Antonelli, although Villeneuve was left disappointed by the experienced Mercedes driver’s defending.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
In a series of scathing remarks, Villeneuve said he believed Russell did not look like a driver fighting for the championship and had “already lost the battle” to Antonelli before it had even begun.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Russell wasn’t very good at defending, was he?” Villeneuve questioned on Sky F1. “He left it too late and left the door open. It didn’t look like a driver fighting for the championship.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“He looked like he’d already lost the battle to his team-mate, and it was actually a disappointing drive from Russell.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“He had no pace. Look at the qualifying he had \u2014 he had his team-mate covered. He had no pace, he was going backwards and feeling the pressure. Very disappointing.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has received brutal criticism from 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve following his latest battle with Kimi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-744611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}