Kimi Antonelli on the run, George Russell stymied: "Things out of my control"

George Russell does not fit in. His teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli experienced the perfect weekend in Monte Carlo with pole and victory in the Monaco Grand Prix, while the British driver on the contrary had a nightmarish weekend, ending in thirteenth position after a series of penalties and the humiliating lapping suffered by Kimi. The Bolognese driver now has a margin of 68 points in the overall standings, a gulf when one considers Russell’s promising start to the season, which has lost all certainty in a few months. At the press conference, the Englishman appeared testy, and did not take responsibility for what happened in the last two races.

“Two GPs in a row and 40 points thrown away. The team said I did nothing wrong about the speeding in the pit lane: it was a software problem,” he said in relation to one of Sunday’s penalties.

“We don’t know where it came from. A five-second penalty is not ideal, but it’s not the end of the world. And then of course came the drive-through when I was in P3 for not properly serving the previous penalty.”

Russell admitted to being in a “very strange state of mind.” “I still believe in myself a lot and I know what I can do, and we haven’t even gone 30 percent of the way yet, but we’ve already lost a lot of points. I’ve had very difficult moments in my career, maybe with a series of two or three bad races on a personal level, but I’ve never had a series of bad luck like this.”

“But I reiterate that I still believe a lot in myself and I’m convinced that we will fight to win races until the end of the year, but right now it’s tough. If I look at things objectively, if you take stock a little bit, I still think I would have been very close and I could have had at least two more wins in the last Grands Prix. So many things were out of my control.”