George Russell said he did not speak to media after the Mexican Grand Prix because he was “extremely disappointed” by his latest technical problem.
The Mercedes driver qualified on the front row of the grid in Mexico but lost several places on the first lap due to a drop in energy deployment from his power unit. Mercedes’ deputy team principal Bradley Lord described it as “a de-rate out of nowhere because of one of the complex bits of the energy rules”.While Andrea Kimi Antonelli clinched the world championship on Sunday, Russell said he was more disappointed by his latest setback in the race.
“I was extremely disappointed on Sunday night, more from the fact of missing out on a great result from something, again, outside of my control,” he said. “That was just a real tough pill to swallow.
“This season has been: tough moment, pick yourself back up, tough moment, pick yourself up. 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 Mexico where I was like, I need to just get out of here because it’s just been relentless of what’s happened this year.”
Having led the world championship at the beginning of the season, Russell has now fallen to fourth place behind Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. He is determined not to let his disappointing campaign prevent him from coming back stronger next year.
“It has been very exhausting,” he said. “I think just the mental challenge of having setbacks and having to pick yourself back up, and then things [happening] outside of your control, and then when you arrive at the next race and the performance isn’t where you want, it’s been mentally very, very exhausting.
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“I go into every weekend believing that we can win, and I love racing, but this season just clearly was not meant to be in every single regard. I’m not saying I want this season to finish today, I’ll always fight to the end, but as I said before I’ve never had a season where there’s just been so many blows.
“You get to a point and you sort of think how do you keep picking yourself up when it’s like every other weekend you’re getting knocked down again? So it is tough, but I believe in myself.
“I’ve had a lot more good years than bad years and I think every single athlete and person in the world, they don’t have every single year of their life that goes the way they want. We all deal with issues, we’ll have things going on in our life and we will have years of failure and this has been one of those years for me.
“It’s not going to define me, it’s not going to define my career, I just got to come back stronger.”
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