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.”
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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.”
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