Russell admits luck helped him gain on Antonelli in Barcelona

Russell led for much of the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix after qualifying on pole position. However, once Fernando Alonso's Aston Martin stopped on track, which led to a Virtual Safety Car, the Mercedes driver was overtaken by Lewis Hamilton, who was able to make a free pit stop for hard tyres.

On his final stint, Russell also began losing ground to his teammate Antonelli and was overtaken by the Italian driver. However, instead of losing further points to the youngster, Russell ultimately gained 18 points on his rival after Antonelli's Mercedes suddenly stopped on track.

Speaking after the race, Russell explained his issues: "I mean, 18 more points than I’ve achieved in the last two races. I would take the positives from that and I would take the positives from the weekend as a whole. The race was feeling good, to be honest. I felt solid at the start and just slowly eking out the gap to Lewis, and he obviously committed quite early to the three-stop and then we covered, but stuck on the two-stop and, yeah, from that point onwards it was quite challenging and just didn’t have the pace and wasn’t feeling too happy with the Hard tyre."

The Briton continued: "I'm not sure [if I maximized the car's potential]. We need to look at it afterwards, to be honest. You know, I think Lewis would have come through regardless, but he obviously jumped us with the Virtual Safety Car and I got fortunate with Kimi’s failure as well. So, it’s a shame to see how the race ended for him and obviously for us as a team and as HPP, we’ve had a few failures recently, so that’s a big concern for us."

After the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, Russell is currently in third place in the drivers' standings. He is nine points behind Hamilton, and 50 points behind Antonelli.

After the race, the Briton added: "I’m going to be honest: I’m not really thinking about the championship. I’m thinking about just controlling my controllables. Friday and Saturday I felt like I did everything to the best of my ability and got absolutely the best result possible on almost every single lap I did.

Asked whether they should approach the championship differently with Hamilton also being on the radar, he said: "Well, at the moment, you know, Lewis is obviously ahead of me in the championship. We need to see across the course of a couple of races. They did bring a big upgrade here and I think the development slope is so steep at the moment for all of the teams. Whoever is going to be bringing those upgrades earliest is going to be taking a step forward. And we saw it with McLaren in Miami, having a really strong weekend, and then ourselves and Ferrari have taken a step forward thereafter. So honestly, the approach doesn’t change for me. I’m just looking to maximise my weekends. It hasn’t been the case recently and see where it takes us."