George Russell has explained why he skipped his post-race media duties in Mexico City, admitting that another costly setback – compounded by watching Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli clinch the world championship – left him needing to “just get out”.
Russell headed into race day at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez with a genuine chance of fighting for victory after missing pole position to Lewis Hamilton by just 0.009 seconds.
But a deployment problem ruined his start, dropping him down the order, before contact with Isack Hadjar brought a 10-second penalty. He eventually finished sixth.
Antonelli, meanwhile, secured the title with third place, becoming the youngest world champion in F1 history. The contrast withing the Mercedes team made an already difficult Sunday even harder for Russell to process.
‘I need to just get out of here’
Speaking ahead of this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix, the Mercedes driver explained that his absence from the media pen was less about avoiding difficult questions than finding some breathing space after another bruising episode.
“I was extremely disappointed Sunday night, more from the fact of missing out on a great result from something again outside of my control, and that was just a really tough pill to swallow,” Russell explained on Thursday in Sao Paulo.
The Briton said the relentless cycle of setbacks had finally caught up with him.
“This season it’s been ‘tough moment, pick yourself back up, tough moment, pick yourself back up’. And I think, as an individual, I’ve continued to have that resilience of being able to always pick myself back up, and it kind of just got to the point in me where I was like, ‘I need to just get out of here’, because it’s just been relentless what’s happened this year.
“It’s been tough. I’m here, four days later, ready to go again. And I think for any individual, or sportsperson, or businessperson, you never have every year of your life that goes the way you want.
“We all have problems we deal with. We have good days, bad days, good years, bad years. I think it’s important to not let that define you – you’ve just got to come back stronger, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
A season of repeated setbacks
Russell’s frustration is rooted in more than one disappointing afternoon. A power unit failure while leading the Canadian Grand Prix and recurring straight-line deployment problems have repeatedly disrupted his campaign.
A review with his race engineer revealed just how frequently trouble had struck: 14 races with some kind of issue, against only six trouble-free weekends.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had this many setbacks in my career,” he admitted.
“I went through – after the race with my engineer – the season race by race, and we realised we had six races this season with no issues, and 14 races where we’ve had an issue of some sort.
“To give perspective, in the years gone by, we would maybe have two races where there were issues, or I think in 2023 we had four races where we had issues. This season we’ve had 14 races.
“I’ve always sort of picked myself back up. As much as I love talking to [the media] after the race, I didn’t really fancy it on this occasion, so I was like, ‘I’m going to just get out of here and go for a nice dinner and think about something other than the rubbish season we’ve had’.”
Read also: Brundle warns Russell: Find ‘overdrive’ mode or it’s ‘game overRussell has since returned to the task, insisting he is ready to race in Sao Paulo.
But his explanation offered a rare glimpse of the accumulated frustration behind a campaign in which reliability and performance problems have repeatedly denied him the results he felt were possible.
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