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 the set-up or the tyres. We are all trying to solve what is going on.
“I am seeing on my steering wheel that I am losing speed when I’m full gas on the straights. I feel powerless. I don’t know what the solution is, but I am praying ahead of (next weekend’s race in) Budapest that we find it.”
Russell, 28, has spent much of a season he began as the bookmakers’ title tip in his team-mate’s shadow. He has two wins to Antonelli’s five and on Sunday will also have to find a way past Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who lines up from second.
Antonelli is brimming with confidence and might have been even further ahead in the championship had he not failed to finish two of the past three rounds, following an engine failure in Spain and damage to his car at Silverstone.
Lewis Hamilton, 32 points behind Antonelli in the standings, was a major doubt for qualifying after he crashed out of final practice to leave his mechanics a two-hour repair job.
They succeeded to allow Hamilton a shot at disturbing Antonelli, but the seven-time world champion was unable to lay a glove on the Italian teenager, finishing 0.534 seconds back.
“The guys did a great job to repair the car,” said Hamilton. “These things happen, we move on, but something wasn’t the same as it had been before on the rear suspension and the balance wasn’t right. But they pushed right to the last minute to get the thing fixed and I am grateful they did.”
