George Russell: Mercedes has taken a “big step backwards towards the midfield”

George Russell believes Mercedes has taken a “big step backwards towards the midfield” this year after a challenging qualifying session at the Belgian Grand Prix on Saturday.

Russell could only manage the seventh-quickest time in the final part of the F1 qualifying on Saturday, ending up seven tenths down on the pace set by McLaren’s pole-sitter Lando Norris.

This was the worst qualifying result for the Briton since the Monaco GP, where a mechanical problem prevented him from setting a lap time in Q2.

Rookie teammate Kimi Antonelli had an even more miserable day at Spa-Francorchamps after he got eliminated in Q1 and languished in 18th place, only beating the Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

The struggles in qualifying capped off a difficult Saturday for Mercedes, after both drivers also failed to score in the sprint race having started outside the top 10.

Following Saturday’s running, Russell was perplexed as to why Mercedes was not competitive at a track where it won last year with Lewis Hamilton.

“Clearly, as a team we're off the pace this weekend,” Russell told the media including Crash.net. “Other than yesterday, this is my worst qualifying of the year, same for Kimi. 

“So we need to understand what's going on.”

Mercedes has had a tough run in 2025 since Imola, with its 1-3 result in the Canadian Grand Prix looking increasingly like an outlier.

This has allowed Ferrari to move up to second position in the constructors’ championship, with Mercedes now trailing Scuderia by 17 points in the standings.

Russell urged the Brackley-based team to get on top of its recent performance drop, highlighting just how far Mercedes has slipped since the early part of the season.

“We made some small changes [after the sprint], but there's only so much you can do,” he said.

“Historically, [in] sprint race weekends, if you have a bad sprint, if you turn the car upside down for the next day, it rarely works. So we made some sensible changes, but we just need to understand…in the first six races of the year, we were [on] four podiums. Now, we've had one in the last six. Clearly, we've taken a big step backwards towards the midfield.”

There is a high risk of rain on Sunday, potentially opening up opportunities for drivers further down the grid to make major strides in the race.

However, a wet-weather race could be bad news for Mercedes, with Russell revealing: “We're quite light on downforce. We were purple in sector 1 and 3.”