George Russell is hunting for redemption in Monaco. The British driver won the Sprint race in Canada but was left with a bitter taste in his mouth on Sunday, following a technical retirement that knocked him out of the running while leading the pack—albeit closely hounded by Antonelli. This costly DNF caused him to plummet to 43 points behind the top of the standings, a spot now firmly held by the Italian. Speaking with journalists in the Principality, Russell revisited what happened in Montreal, starting with the fireworks that characterized his wheel-to-wheel battles with Antonelli.
“There is absolutely nothing to worry about,” the Mercedes number 63 explained. “We’ve been told that we need to be trusted, and that’s what we do. We are racing drivers, we push to the limit on every single lap, and when we race against each other, we push each other to the absolute limit. Naturally, when you’re sitting on the sidelines, like the guys on the pit wall or even Toto, it’s highly stressful to watch, and you’re tense because you can’t control what’s about to happen, even though you wish you could. But at the end of the day, [Wolff] has to trust us, and he does. That’s just how it is, so we will continue to battle with all our might. We know each other’s limits, and it has been good.”
Regarding the retirement he suffered in Montreal and the bad luck he believes is haunting him, Russell now seems to adopt a somewhat fatalistic attitude, and he didn’t miss the chance to cast a shadow over Antonelli’s current run of form.
“Moving past it? It’s definitely necessary over the course of a 24-race season, and it didn’t take me long to get over that result because, at the end of the day, it was completely out of my control. I arrived in Canada with a single goal, which was to dominate every single major session, and that’s exactly what I did. I started from pole in both qualifying sessions, I won the Sprint, I was leading the Grand Prix, and I had a great battle with Kimi; I was in the lead before the mechanical failure,” the Englishman pointed out.
“I felt like I couldn’t have done anything more in Canada, so in the end, I achieved the goal I set for myself. As for the rest, it’s just part of racing. If you look at anyone’s championship victories in Formula 1 or any other series, I don’t think anyone in history has ever managed to avoid having a bit of bad luck at some stage. I remember last year Lando had a failure in Zandvoort and was disqualified in Las Vegas—two things completely out of his control. Verstappen in 2021 had the puncture in Baku and, arguably, you could say the crash at Silverstone too; both of them could have retired, but he was the one who did while his rival won the race. So these things have always happened in motorsport. I don’t think Kimi will be sitting here at the end of the season saying he didn’t experience a bit of bad luck at some point. That’s just how the game goes, and I don’t let these things phase me.”
George Russell therefore remains highly confident in his raw speed despite the setback in Montreal, viewing his intense rivalry with Kimi Antonelli as a natural product of elite racing that team boss Toto Wolff fully accepts. As the championship heads into the tight streets of Monaco, Russell is banking on the unpredictable nature of motorsport to level the playing field, confident that the championship narrative is still far from fully written.
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