'It's hard to understand' - what now for Russell amid Antonelli 'pain'?

George Russell fell 81 points behind Kimi Antonelli at the Madring; Russell conceded that "realistically I'm not in the fight for the drivers'" after the race; watch every session of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from September 24-26 with a Saturday race, live on Sky Sports F1

Nico Rosberg believes George Russell will currently be driven by a similar level of "insane motivation" to turn the tables on Kimi Antonelli as he was to get the better of Lewis Hamilton after recurring defeats.

Russell's hopes of becoming world champion for the first time this year are increasingly slim with in-form Mercedes team-mate Antonelli opening an 81-point lead over him at the top of the standings.

Since winning March's season-opening Australian Grand Prix, pre-season title favourite Russell has only twice finished ahead of Antonelli in the last 10 races they have both completed with the Briton seeing the young Italian take his seventh and eighth wins of the season across the Monza-Madrid double header.

Rosberg was asked after Sunday's race, in which Russell finished fifth, on Sky Sports F1 about his experience of rebounding to win his world title in 2016 after being soundly beaten to the crown by Mercedes team-mate Hamilton the year before.

"Subjectively, it was painful to keep losing against Lewis and that just drove an insane motivation.

"George will be in a similar situation. He will be so damn motivated at the moment to try and find improvements.

"He'll be working so hard because I know George doesn't give up and he's hating the situation of getting beaten over and over by Kimi.

"He'll be working super hard but it's a bit of a difficult one because it's hard to understand where the pace has gone for him."

Russell has been Mercedes' top-scoring driver in three of his previous four seasons at the team, twice in three years against Hamilton (2022 and 2024) and once alongside a rookie Antonelli (2025), but he requires a major turnaround for that to be the case again this year with nine scheduled races left.

Rosberg believes the diligent Russell will keep working away to find a breakthrough with the W17 car, although says it is inevitable that the 28-year-old will be questioning himself too.

"I'm very impressed with George's approach because he's really a perfectionist and he tries to cover every aspect of his human performance," added the Sky Sports F1 pundit.

"But, all the more, it's tough for him because he doesn't understand himself. He's always been fast; he's always been at least level with his team-mate and suddenly it's gone away from him there.

"It's really painful because you start to doubt yourself. It doesn't matter how confident you are, it then comes [to questioning] 'am I not good enough? Was I better in the past and I'm just doing something wrong now?' It's really difficult."