George Russell left frustrated as ‘serious issue’ with car hampers title bid

An “infuriated” and “powerless” George Russell said he was fighting for the world championship with “one hand behind my back” amid an undiagnosed straight-line speed problem within his Mercedes.

As Kimi Antonelli romped to his sixth pole of the season for Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, in the other Silver Arrows, Russell laboured to fourth, half-a-second behind his team-mate and title rival.

Russell will be bumped up one position for the 44-lap race at Spa-Francorchamps as Lando Norris serves a 10-place grid penalty for exceeding his number of permitted engine parts, which leaves the world champion a lowly 13th.

However, Russell will face an uphill task to prevent Antonelli from extending his 25-point title lead, with the 19-year-old in a class of one so far at this power-hungry venue in the Ardennes and the Briton beset by an apparent mechanical glitch.

“When it feels like you are battling with one hand behind your back it is a challenge,” a bemused Russell explained.

“Yesterday I was losing eight tenths on the straights and today I am losing four tenths. So it is a step in the right direction. But we saw this (problem) at Silverstone and we thought we had discovered what was wrong. We thought it was the brakes. It wasn’t.

“Then we thought it was my driving style with the throttle and I convinced myself that it was something in me, but now we are very confident it isn’t that either.

“There is a serious issue at play here and, although the team are working hard to resolve it, every lap I do, I see I am anywhere between two and six tenths down on the straights. It is pretty infuriating.

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“My whole focus for the last 36 hours has been on straight-line speed, not