George Russell admitted his Mercedes teammate and championship rival Kimi Antonelli has the “momentum” behind him after a third consecutive victory, but remains confident he can take the fight to the 19-year-old over the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
Antonelli won Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix by 3.2 seconds from McLaren’s Lando Norris, extending his lead in the standings to 20 points over Russell.<\/p>\n
The more experienced of the two Mercedes drivers struggled throughout the Miami weekend — finishing Sunday’s race in fourth position and 43 seconds behind Antonelli — but used the example of Norris’ late charge to title success last year as proof of how momentum can shift over a season.<\/p>\n
“Cleary he’s in a really great place at the moment and momentum is with him,” Russell said of Antonelli. “But I’ve got enough experience myself with championships I’ve won to know how momentum swings — also, in the championship [battle] last year.<\/p>\n
“To be honest, I’m not even considering it. I just want to get back on the top step of the podium.<\/p>\n
“The first three races, I had the performance to do that and this weekend I did not have the performance to do that. So I could be standing here now with three very different results from the first three races and this just being a one off, but obviously things worked out differently in China and Japan.”<\/p>\n
Asked if he had underestimated Antonelli this year, Russell said: “No, not at all. He’s a fantastic driver. He’s been exceptionally quick since Day 1.<\/p>\n
“You don’t win all of the championships as a youngster if you don’t have the speed. But I’ve still got confidence in myself, and I’ve also been there, I’ve not forgotten how to drive. It’s a little bit of a tricky run, but we’re four races down, have a long way to go and we’ll assess things over these next few weeks.”<\/p>\n
Norris, who was Antonelli’s closest rival throughout Sunday’s race in Miami, also praised the youngster’s early season form.<\/p>\n
“He’s doing a very good job, hats off to him,” Norris said. “At that age, second year in Formula 1 — he’s doing an incredible job, it’s impressive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
–\u00a0Miami Grand Prix: Kimi Antonelli edges Lando Norris for third straight win, extends title lead
–\u00a0Charles Leclerc on Miami GP error: I put my race in the bin
–\u00a0‘How did we not win this?’: Lando Norris ‘gutted’ after finishing 2nd at Miami Grand Prix<\/p>\n
“To perform under pressure, to be beating his teammate who’s been in it for a lot longer, he’s doing all the right things so you can’t really fault him at the minute. He got a lot of s—- last year, but he’s proving a lot of people wrong so I’m very happy for him.<\/p>\n
“He’s a very nice guy … and he’s also annoying, because I want to beat him. But he’s doing a good job.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell admitted his Mercedes teammate and championship rival Kimi Antonelli has the “momentum” behind him after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-646079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}