George Russell says Mercedes still need time to make their new package work. That admission arrived from a driver who will start the Singapore Grand Prix from the back of the field after a power-unit penalty wiped out the sixth-place grid slot he set in qualifying.

Russell ran Mercedes’ older specification on Saturday while Andrea Kimi Antonelli took the new package and locked out fourth. Even that was not where the team expected the upgrades to put them.

“It was positive to see Kimi sort of more competitive than on Friday. However, we weren’t exactly lighting the timing screen on fire,” Russell told RacingNews365.

“As a team, we’re still not satisfied with where we are with the new package, and I think we recognise we need to make some set of adjustments to compensate for those changes. So maybe we can find a way to make it work and be fast. But right now, yeah, we need more time.”

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The timing is unforgiving. Antonelli leads the drivers’ championship on 325 points to Russell’s 236, a gap that opened to 89 after Russell crashed out of the lead on a damp track in Saturday’s sprint. Max Verstappen won that sprint from Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

Starting from the back

The grid penalty traces back to the engine failure that ended Russell’s Malaysian Grand Prix. Mercedes fitted a fresh internal combustion engine, turbocharger, exhaust and MGU-K for Singapore, and the FIA confirmed the stack of penalties sent him to the back of the field regardless of qualifying.

He is not treating it as a lost weekend.

“All-out attack; just trying to enjoy the weekend,” Russell said ahead of the race.

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“If you could choose where to take the penalty in the season, this would be probably the second bottom of the list after Monaco.”

Marina Bay’s narrow walls and frequent safety cars have produced unlikely comebacks, but overtaking is notoriously hard here. Russell’s own target for Sunday was modest.

“Yeah, hoping to get into the points. It’s going to be very challenging.”

Six races to close an 89-point gap

Russell has already said another power-unit change is likely before the season ends, with six rounds still on the calendar after Singapore. That is a structural problem the car concept Mercedes have brought in cannot fix on its own.

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The 89-point gap to Antonelli is now larger than any single weekend’s maximum haul. Russell’s realistic brief is damage limitation and keeping Hamilton, 15 points behind him in third, from closing in.

The Singapore Grand Prix is scheduled for Sunday, 11 October, at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

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