Why is George Russell so far off Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli at the F1 Miami Grand Prix?

George Russell has admitted Miami is one of his weakest Formula 1 circuits after a difficult qualifying.

The 28-year-old Briton could only take fifth on the grid in qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix, 0.399 seconds adrift of Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli, who claimed his third consecutive pole position.

It was a scrappy display from Russell, who has trailed his teenage team-mate and title rival for most of the weekend so far in Miami, particularly in qualifying. He mainly put his struggles down to the low grip conditions.

“I just made a mistake on my last corner, last lap. I was about three tenths up,” Russell said in response to a question from Crash.net.

“A little bit annoyed, but it's just a track I've always struggled with. Kimi was on pole last year, I was P5. Today he’s pole and I’m P5.

“It's just very low grip here, you’re sliding around a lot, the tarmac's hot. It's similar to Brazil. I think Kimi, again, was more competitive with me there.

“Whereas I most prefer the high grip conditions where the tyre and the car is more connected with the ground. I just want to get through this weekend really.”

Russell, who is seven points behind Antonelli in the championship, continued: “I was pretty pleased with the race this morning.

"My pace was good and obviously maybe if I did things slightly differently, I could have held the position when I initially overtook Kimi. So, it's just qualifying I've been struggling with this weekend.”

Russell expanded further on his struggles at Miami in an interview with Sky Sports F1.

“I just struggle on these low grip circuits, to be honest,” he explained.

“Here, Zandvoort, Brazil. It’s something I do want to work on, but I would say there’s probably three tracks from the 24 that are outliers for me, and Miami is definitely top of that list.”

When asked to pinpoint his area of weakness, Russell replied: “I’m quite a smooth, precise driver. That’s always been my style and on these tracks you’ve just got to be happy with the car just sliding.

“I like the car on the edge, but this is like you’ve got a set of 200-lap old tyres on your car and you go round and just sliding and understeer. That’s the same for everybody, for what it’s worth.

“It’s so hot, the tyre pressures are high and the grips really low. So it doesn’t actually feel that pleasant. Whereas you go to tracks like Saudi and the grip is super high and it feels mega to drive.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff likened the situation to a tennis player who is stronger on certain types of court surfaces.

"George said to me he's struggled with certain tracks. Here, the asphalt is very smooth," Wolff told Sky Sports F1.

"It's almost like a [tennis] player that is good on clay, and another on a hard surface.

"Through qualifying, he made it up and it's just a smidge missing to P3, so I'm really happy to see his development over qualifying on a track he's not 100% comfortable."

Despite his disappointing performance relative to Antonelli, Russell insisted he is not viewing Sunday’s race as being damage-limitation in the championship.

“I’m not really thinking damage-limitation, I’m just going out there to maximise the result and that was the same this morning,” he added.

“Tomorrow is a totally different day with weather on the radar. We saw on the race starts, everything can change in that first couple of hundred metres.

“I’m just not really in a great groove at the moment but it’s really early days, this is a weak track for me and I’m looking forward to getting to some tracks where I know I excel.”