24/05/2025 20:10
George Russell believes his Monaco Grand Prix weekend is "over"
following his early exit from qualifying. Russell's car lost power
on the run up the hill in the first sector as he attempted to lay
down his first lap during Q2. He was unable to restart and suffered
an early elimination, just moments after team-mate Kimi Antonelli
crashed at the end of the opening qualifying segment. Russell
stated a bump on the track caused his power outage, but was left
confused as to why it did not occur earlier in the weekend. "It was
definitely the cause, it was a bump on the straight," Russell told
media including RacingNews365 . "It's a bump that's been there all
weekend and a bump that I've felt all weekend. "For whatever reason
on this occasion, the whole engine switched off when I hit this
bump. It was really disappointing, because we got ourselves a bit
lost this weekend with the setup. "We went back to basics for
qualifying and from lap one, I felt back in the game. "Kimi stayed
with more the set up he had in FP3, I went back to something we
knew. He was struggling and we were there. I feel we would have
been in the top four today." George Russell not expecting two-stop
strategy to save weekend Overtaking around the Monaco circuit is an
incredibly difficult task, with the qualifying session often
labelled as the most important of the season. Although a new
mandatory two-stop strategy is in force for the Monaco race,
Russell does not see it saving Mercedes' weekend. "It was clicking
in Q1 and we were one of the few drivers not to take new tyres,"
Russell added. "I did one corner in Q2 and I was already almost two
tenths up, and already that would have been plenty enough to be
into Q2 with two [fresh] sets. "We have the two hard tyres, we had
a real we had a real chance this weekend. Now it's up in smoke and
it's weekend over. So it's pretty deflating." While Russell expects
"crazy" strategies to be in play, he stated: "Half of the guys will
go one way, half will go the other way. "Whatever we decide, we're
[still] stuck behind five drivers."
