Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton bested him<\/a> by just nine thousandths of a second.<\/p>\nDespite being bumped down into second place, Russell still saw the positives from the time he managed to deliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t feel in the fight all day, really, and I’m very glad to have pulled it off when it mattered,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But I still would like more consistency. You know, we’re either doing very good laps or very bad laps. We’re not doing anything in between.<\/p>\n
“I always have this faith that the performance is in there but just struggling to unlock it more consistently.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a tricky few races for me, and I’m still struggling to get on top of this car to be honest, because it’s been a very difficult weekend up until one lap in Q3.<\/p>\n
“And, you know, finding half a second to almost get pole from Lewis, it was obviously really close in the end. So I always know it’s in there.<\/p>\n
“I know the performance is in there, but I just can’t… the hit rate is too low at the moment. So that’s the frustration I have. But, of course, happy with this front row.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the track in Mexico proving to be a unique challenge for the drivers, given its high altitude and low grip, Russell explained how dropping temperatures at the end of Qualifying played into his hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe temperatures were getting cooler, and I think that came into our favour,” he added. “You know, there’s a bit of cloud cover, the sun’s coming down.<\/p>\n
“I did a very hard out-lap, and it just gave me a bit more confidence to get the grip in the tyre. And I think that’s just what helped me extract the lap time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Antonelli goes in search of securing his first title in Sunday’s race, Russell also faces a fight to retain second place in the standings, with polesitter Hamilton just a point behind. However, Russell believes that he can fight for the win if he can get off the line and pass the Ferrari as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s going to be very tight between the top eight drivers,” he said, assessing Sunday’s Grand Prix. “The start is going to be crucial, and Turn 1 is going to be crucial.<\/p>\n
“So yeah, I want to try and get through there, make it up a position and hold on to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell has conceded he is still frustrated with the lack of consistency in performance from his Mercedes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-948309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948309","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=948309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}