Russell 'infuriated' by straight-line issue that leaves him 'powerless'

Image source, Getty Images Image caption, George Russell will start the Belgian Grand Prix from third place because of a 10-place grid penalty for McLaren's Lando Norris By Andrew Benson F1 Correspondent at Spa-Francorchamps Published 9 minutes ago George Russell says a "serious issue" with the straight-line performance of his Mercedes is making his title fight with team-mate Kimi Antonelli "impossible". Russell qualified fourth for the Belgian Grand Prix, and was 0.508 seconds slower than the 19-year-old Italian, who took his sixth pole position in 10 races. The Briton said that the majority of his deficit to Antonelli could be explained by a mystery lack of speed on the straights. "When I cross the line, you see you're half a second down, it feels pretty rubbish," Russell said. "But when you realise more than 75% of that's coming from the power-unit, you feel a bit better. "I was pleased with my lap. When I look at the corners, there's a lot of corners I was faster. There's definitely corners I needed to improve. But the corners look like a normal fight you'd have for a pole. The straights is not." Russell has been struggling for pace in comparison with Antonelli all weekend at the classic Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium. He ended Friday practice more than a second adrift, and had been told by his team that the deficit was explained by the way he was driving the corners. Image source, Reuters Image caption, George Russell says he loses "anywhere from 0.2-0.6secs in the straights" The team recognised that the issue was that Russell was less comfortable with the car in the medium and high-speed corners of the middle sector. That meant he was making corrections to the steering that Antonelli did not have to do. These cost speed, which needed to be filled in with battery power. As electrical energy is limited, that left Russell down on deployment in the final third of the lap. But after hard work over the weekend Russell made significant inroads into that issue, and Mercedes admitted they were still seeing a straight-line discrepancy that they could not yet explain. Russell, who heads into the race 25 points behind Antonelli, said: "There's a serious issue at play here and the team are working so hard to resolve it. "But every lap I do, when I see I'm down anywhere from 0.2-0.6secs in the straights, it's pretty infuriating. "My whole focus for the last 36 hours has been on straight-line speed. It hasn't been focused on the set-up, the tyres or anything, because we're all trying to solve what is going on. And even my last lap, for some reason, I lost another 0.15secs to myself, just on the straight. "You're watching (the display) on your steering wheel, just losing speed when you're full gas in the straight. You feel powerless. So, we don't know what's going on. "I don't think it's the power unit, to be honest. But there's something slowing us down in the straights. And the team are really, really on it now to try and solve it. "Battling agains