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George Russell admitted he was unsure why his British Grand Prix qualifying unravelled after a combination of tyre and straight-line speed issues left him fourth on the grid at Silverstone.
Russell arrived at the British GP weekend off the back of a strong Austrian GP, but the momentum did not carry cleanly into Silverstone. The Mercedes driver conceded he had been “on the back foot” compared with team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who followed up Sprint success by taking pole position for Sunday’s main race.
Antonelli’s qualifying pace left Russell as much as three-and-a-half tenths adrift in the top-10 shootout, a gap that proved costly on a weekend where Mercedes had looked capable of fighting at the very front. For more on the sister Mercedes performance, read our report on Antonelli beating Leclerc to British GP pole as Russell faded at Silverstone.
Asked what had gone wrong on his final flying lap, Russell said: “No, not too sure, just tyres were a bit cold and compromised the last lap.”
Russell’s qualifying had looked fragile from Q1, when he appeared to understeer into Luffield and ran through the gravel in a close call with the outside barriers. He kept the W17 moving and advanced through the session, but the incident underlined how uncomfortable his afternoon had become.
The Briton dismissed suggestions that the moment caused lasting damage, insisting: “No, there was no damage, but all weekend we’ve been losing lots of time in the straights.”
He added that the issue had been visible across multiple qualifying attempts. “Yesterday in Q3 there were almost three attempts I lost in the straights. Today in qualifying, if you look at the speed traps, it’s 3kph down in the middle sector, 6kph down in the last sector compared to my team-mate and compared to the other McLaren cars.”
Russell said Mercedes had believed it had isolated the problem after the Sprint, with the team investigating whether the brakes were locking on. But that theory has not fully convinced the squad.
“The team are working super hard to understand why that is,” he said. “We thought we found the problem this morning and we thought the brakes were locking on. But we’re not convinced that’s the issue. But it just compounds everything when going into a session knowing you’re at a bit of a disadvantage.”
Russell suspects his car may simply be carrying too much drag. “If the deployment looks OK, I’m just offset on speed in the straight. It just looks like I’m running more of a dragier car,” he said.
Despite the uncertainty, Russell remains focused on recovering in front of his home crowd. “I’ll do my best tomorrow to go on the podium,” he concluded. If he converts fourth place into a podium, it would be his first at Silverstone.
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