‘I need to get out of here’ – Russell reveals aftermath of Antonelli’s title triumph in Mexico

George Russell has confessed that he needed “to just get out” after a frustrating race in Mexico City, combined with seeing team mate Kimi Antonelli secure the Drivers’ Championship, left him to rue his “rubbish season”.

With a P3 finish, the Italian secured the title for good as it’s now mathematically impossible for any other driver to surpass his 380 points in the remaining rounds, making him the youngest champion in F1 history.

Although Antonelli’s triumph was highly likely heading into the Mexico City Grand Prix, Russell at least had a chance of victory after he missed out on pole position by just 0.009s to Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.

However, his hopes of challenging for the lead disappeared when a deployment issue impacted his start, which caused him to drop down the order before making contact with Isack Hadjar. Adding to his woes, he received a 10-second time penalty for the incident and ultimately wound up sixth.

“I was extremely disappointed Sunday night, more from the fact of missing out on a great result from something again outside of my control, and that was just a really tough pill to swallow,” Russell explained in Sao Paulo.

“This season it’s been ‘tough moment, pick yourself back up, tough moment, pick yourself back up’. And 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 me where I was like, ‘I need to just get out of here’, because it’s just been relentless what’s happened this year.

“It’s been tough. I’m here, four days later, ready to go again. And I think for any individual, or sportsperson, or businessperson, you never have every year of your life that goes the way you want.

“We all have problems we deal with. We have good days, bad days, good years, bad years. I think it’s important to not let that define you – you’ve just got to come back stronger, and that’s what we’re here to do.”

The overwhelming day also saw Russell skip his post-race media duties and take time away from the track, with the numerous reliability problems he’s endured this season still fresh on his mind.

From a power unit failure whilst leading the Canadian Grand Prix to repeated straight line speed deployment troubles, the Briton’s title ambitions were partly limited by the performance of his W17.

He admitted: “I don’t think I’ve ever had this many setbacks in my career. I went through – after the race with my engineer – the season race by race, and we realised we had six races this season with no issues, and 14 races where we’ve had an issue of some sort.

“To give perspective, in the years gone by, we would maybe have two races where there were issues, or I think in 2023 we had four races where we had issues. This season we’ve had 14 races.

“I’ve always sort of picked myself back up. As much as I love talking to [the media] after the race, I didn’t really fancy it on this occasion, so I was like, ‘I’m going to just get out of here and go for a nice dinner and think about something other than the rubbish season we’ve had’.”