Russell surprised by Verstappen's Monaco pace: 'More challenging than we thought'

Russell set the fourth-quickest time during the second free practice session in Monaco and finished ahead of his teammate; although he was still roughly four tenths slower than his ex-teammate Lewis Hamilton.

Speaking to F1 TV after the session, the Mercedes driver highlighted that they expected Ferrari to be strong, but Verstappen and Red Bull did surprise them.

He explained: "Yeah, we expected Ferrari to be the guys to beat. A lot of people thought it was just chat, but clearly they are the team to beat.

"I think Red Bull have also been a bit of a surprise for us. We knew out of the races so far this was going to be our most challenging. It's probably been slightly more challenging than we would have hoped, but we did make some good improvement from FP1 into FP2. We need to make the same step again overnight and I don't think we nailed it today. There is room to improve, but definitely Ferrari are the team," he continued.

The Briton then once again highlighted that the Ferrari car's DNA simply works on a circuit like Monaco. "I've got to be honest, the trends that we see with Ferrari every year here and on street tracks and what we've seen today have been there for probably 10 years, to be honest. I think every car has like an inherent DNA and their inherent DNA, especially on the mechanical side of the car, clearly works on these street tracks, especially when there's a lot of warp in the corners, the corners dropping away."

Therefore, he believes it will be hard to outperform the Scuderia on Saturday. He concluded: "We're doing everything we can to try and make those improvements, but as I said, I do think we can close the gap if we can overcome it, I'm not sure."

Lewis Hamilton’s 1:13.026 set the benchmark in FP2 after a back-and-forth for top spot with local favourite Charles Leclerc, while Max Verstappen briefly led when the softs came out.

George Russell followed in fourth, with Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar impressing in P5 and P6 as Oscar Piastri and Nico Hülkenberg completed the upper midfield.

The session ended early when Sergio Perez stopped with smoke, triggering a red flag after an earlier VSC for Lando Norris’s stricken McLaren at the Nouvelle chicane. Read more