claimed<\/a> his fourth pole position of the season, giving himself the best possible chance of winning his fifth race in a row.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, Russell was four tenths of a second slower than Antonelli, finishing in sixth behind Max Verstappen, the Ferrari duo of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, and Isack Hadjar in the second Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Russell, in his eighth F1 campaign, entered the season as one of the favorites for the title and won the opening race of the season in Australia but has not stood on the podium since finishing second in Shanghai in March.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old claimed pole in Canada in the last grand prix but was forced to retire due to a mechanical issue while Antonelli went on to win the race, extending the gap between the pair at the top of the drivers\u2019 championship to 43 points. That gap could grow further on Sunday, with overtakes notoriously challenging around the narrow streets of Monte Carlo.<\/p>\n
After Monaco qualifying, Russell lamented his sudden lack of pace across all sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the start of the year it was just easy,\u201d he told Sky Sports. \u201cEvery lap I did in practice qualifying, it was P1, worst case P2, you know, every single session, Q1, Q2, Q3, the last three races, it\u2019s just been nowhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven Canada, it was a real fight to get a decent lap and then I just nailed it at the end of both of those sessions, but that was sort of like pulling something special out of a hat, and a little bit lucky to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell suggested that the Mercedes car was not suited to his driving style.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year (the car) suited me just fine and this year it\u2019s suited (Antonelli) perfectly well,\u201d he said.\u201dSo either I need to adjust to this, and I\u2019ll do my best to do that, but it still doesn\u2019t answer why the start of the year was such a breeze, so, yeah, a bit bamboozled right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff described Russell as \u201crobust and resilient\u201d but added that the British driver lacked confidence in the car on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a few races that went against him,\u201d Wolff told Sky Sports. \u201cLuck wasn\u2019t on his side or he wasn\u2019t there at the right moment and here I don\u2019t think it\u2019s so much the psychological side.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just never had the confidence in the car. Qualifying started on a bad foot, you know, FP3 was still very OK. Once you start to run behind (on) the performance and you lose the confidence, it\u2019s super difficult to catch up again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell says that he has been left \u201cbamboozled\u201d by his drop in pace following a promising start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-720268","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\/720268","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=720268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}