Racing
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George Russell finished an unlikely second in the British Grand Prix after a slow puncture and an extra pit stop dropped him to seventh, but the Mercedes driver said Silverstone exposed pace problems that would leave him short in the championship fight despite slashing Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s lead to 25 points.
Russell had been fighting Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton for third when Mercedes warned him of a slow puncture. The unscheduled stop around lap 35 appeared to end his podium chance, yet the race turned late as Verstappen crashed out, Antonelli hit trouble and fell down the order, and Ferrari pitted Hamilton under the Safety Car while Russell stayed out and inherited second behind winner Charles Leclerc.
“After the slow puncture and pitting, then going down to P7, if you told me I was going to come home in second, I would have been like, ‘there’s no way’,” Russell told media after the race. He added that third “was probably fair and would have been a good result behind Charles and Kimi.”
That was the contradiction of Russell’s afternoon. The result was one of his strongest of the season on paper, but he said the underlying performance was not good enough. Antonelli had the edge through qualifying, the sprint and the Grand Prix, while Russell pointed to poor pace created by problems both inside and outside his control.
“I don’t really know how to sum it up, to be honest, because it’s been a very challenging weekend,” Russell said. “Things within my control not good enough, things outside of my control haven’t been good enough, which has all resulted in poor pace.” He also said Mercedes had straight-line-speed issues in practice and qualifying, even if the car felt a little better on Sunday.
Russell was blunt about what that means beyond the Silverstone podium. “If I’m being brutally honest, I’m not going to fight for a championship if the performances continue like that,” he said. “I’m not coming away from this weekend satisfied. I would have been more satisfied leaving Canada when I broke down from the lead than I am today standing P2.”
Even so, Silverstone changed the standings. Russell took 18 points out of Antonelli after the championship leader suffered a wheel shield failure and a five-second penalty for track limits on his way to 16th and out of the points. The swing cut Antonelli’s advantage from 40 points before the weekend and from 68 after Monaco to 25, putting Russell back within range even if he believes the level behind the result still has to improve.