George Russell says he “needed to just get out of here” after Kimi Antonelli’s Mexico title clinch

By Vancouver Television Sports Desk

Nearly a week after the Mexico City Grand Prix, George Russell looked back on the emotion of watching his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli clinch the Drivers’ Championship. Russell said his reaction was shaped by a disappointing Mexico race, and by the way a “rubbish season” has unfolded for him personally.

With a P3 finish in Mexico City, Antonelli secured the title for good because it is now mathematically impossible for any other driver to surpass his 380 points in the remaining rounds. Russell noted that Antonelli’s triumph was all but assured entering the event, but Russell still had an opportunity to fight for the win after qualifying, having missed pole for the Grand Prix by just 0.009 seconds to Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.

Russell said that chance quickly disappeared when a deployment issue affected his start. He dropped down the order before making contact with Isack Hadjar, an incident that led to a 10-second time penalty. The result left Russell ultimately finishing sixth, a finish he described as especially difficult to accept given how much was out of his control.

Speaking in Sao Paulo, Russell said he was “extremely disappointed” on Sunday night, “more from the fact of missing out on a great result from something again outside of my control,” adding that it was “just a really tough pill to swallow.” He framed the period after a frustrating sequence of setbacks as relentless, describing a moment in his own mindset where he felt he needed to step away rather than process everything in public immediately.

Russell said his season has involved an ongoing cycle of difficult moments followed by the need to recover, describing it as “tough moment, pick yourself back up, tough moment, pick yourself back up.” He said he believed he had continued to show resilience, but that it reached the point where he felt, “I need to just get out of here,” because the run of problems through the year had been unrelenting.

He added that he was back at work four days later, ready to go again, and that even for athletes, sportspersons, or businesspeople, it is “important to not let that define you.” Russell said there are always problems, good days and bad days, good years and bad years, and that the right response is to come back stronger.

Russell also discussed how his Mexico result affected his post-race routine. He said he skipped his post-race media duties and took time away from the track, pointing to the reliability problems he has dealt with throughout the season.

In describing his broader season context, Russell said reliability failures have limited his title ambitions, citing a power unit failure while leading the Canadian Grand Prix and repeated straight-line speed deployment issues affecting his W17. Russell said he had never experienced what he described as this many setbacks in his career, adding that after the race he and his engineer reviewed the year “race by race” and identified that there had been six races with no issues, compared with 14 races that included an issue of some sort.

Russell offered additional perspective by comparing the frequency of problems with prior years. He said that, in the years before, there might have been two races with issues, and that in 2023 he believed there were four races with issues. He concluded that this season had involved problems in far more races.

Russell said his decision to avoid talking to the media in Mexico reflected a desire to get away and focus on something else. He described it as wanting to “go for a nice dinner and think about something other than the rubbish season we’ve had.”