Russell proud of resilience after string of problems

George Russell says he has had to be "the most resilient I've ever been" to cope with the string of problems that have affected his title challenge this season.

Russell heads into this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix 50 points behind Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli after retiring from the Belgian race last weekend following a first-lap collision with Lewis Hamilton.

That doubled his deficit to Antonelli, who won the race to take his sixth victory in 10 grands prix this season.

"I definitely feel this is the most resilient I've ever been in my whole life. I take pride in that as my mentality on the outside of the car," Russell said.

"I guess it's because I still believe in myself and the team, even when everything looks against us. I've been in this position a couple of times this season, and then managed to bounce back and get a good result, or two."

Russell had reduced his deficit from 66 points to 25 over the three races in Spain, Austria and Britain.

"The run from Monaco to Silverstone, I took strides forward," Russell said. "It was a step back, but I'm still closer today than I was four races ago, and not even halfway through (the season) yet. There's still a lot of things I need to work on myself."

Russell had a particularly trying weekend in Belgium, with a series of engine-related issues affecting his performance.

In the gap between Belgium and Hungary, Mercedes have understood what happened to Russell to leave him short of electrical deployment in the final part of the lap.

This cost him about half of his 0.5-second deficit to Antonelli in qualifying.

And in the race, while both had the same shortage of electrical power on accelerating out of the first corner after the start, circumstances meant Antonelli was less affected by it than Russell.

The Italian lifted into Eau Rouge because he was being challenged by Max Verstappen's Red Bull. That reset his system and meant he had deployment on the following straight.

Russell took Eau Rouge flat, and his lack of deployment left him vulnerable to Hamilton, who collided with him at the following chicane.

He said: "These new power units are just exceptionally complex, and there was just something deeply embedded in the calibration and the code that was almost impossible to see unless you knew exactly what to look for. So I'm glad we have found it.

"Spa and Silverstone probably exposed the issue just because of the nature of the track. Of course it's a bit frustrating to have what happened on Sunday, but I'm just looking forward now, and that's how the game goes."

The knock-on effect of the problem with energy management in Spa was that Russell wasted time chasing it which would have been better devoted to other matters.

"Coming out of Monaco, going into Barcelona and Austria, I made some changes with my driving style, and I felt I made a good step forward," Russell said.

"And obviously I was on pole in both those races, and won in Austria, and just wanted to continue that forward momentum.

"I'm guilty that it has taken probably too much of my focus, and I'm spending a lot of time trying to change my driving style again, more for the power unit, rather than just trying to drive fast, so, again, it's learning.

"We recognised after Spa, it wasn't in the driving style. So that is something, at least, that is a learning that has been validated that I didn't know pre-Spa."

Hungary is a circuit entirely different in character to Spa and Silverstone and might be expected to favour Ferrari because of their strong cornering performance.

But both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc played down their chances, even though they have won two of the past four races.

Hamilton said: "Mercedes are still the team to beat. They've won almost all the races, they're quick in all circuits, fast in slow-speed circuits, the quickest in Monaco. You have to anticipate they could be quickest this weekend as well."

McLaren have a major upgrade for this weekend that the team hope will move them back towards the front, but Lando Norris was also cautious about his prospects.

"We want to be optimistic about it," the world champion said. "We want to be confident and hope that it fixes some of our issues that we're currently struggling with and limiting us with.

"There's been a few upgrades this year that have maybe not worked exactly as we would have hoped, so I think we're just being a little bit more cautious on waiting to see if it works exactly as we expect."