Autosport has reported:

George Russell described Saturday at the Singapore Grand Prix as “a very bad day all in all” after crashing out of the sprint and qualifying sixth. The Mercedes driver said the accident was his own mistake and believed the hurried rebuild of his W17 may have affected how the car performed later in the day.

Russell started the wet sprint from the front row and got away better than polesitter Max Verstappen, taking the lead on the Marina Bay street circuit. He ran slightly wide on the exit of the final corner, lost control and spun into the inside wall, ending his race.

He had qualified second for the sprint, but could manage only sixth in the main qualifying session. Russell said the car no longer felt the same, and described struggling with its rear end and overheating the tyres. “I was struggling with the rear end and then I was overheating the tyres and it was just a bit of a downward spiral, whereas yesterday it all just clicked and it was all working well, so we need to see why that was,” he said.

Russell said the change in performance could be related to the team rebuilding the car after the crash. “[This] is not, sometimes, a surprise when the whole team is putting it back together so quickly and it's obviously been in the wall. Yesterday we were competitive every lap we did, and today it was not the case.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the car had been completed at the last minute and supported further investigation into its condition. “With George, the car was only finished at the very last minute,” Wolff told Sky Germany. “The floor is probably not quite as it should be. So all in all, it was a good performance.”

Russell’s prospects for Sunday are further complicated by a power unit penalty resulting from his engine failure in Sepang, which will relegate him to the back of the grid. Asked by Autosport what he could achieve in the race, the 28-year-old said he was unsure and pointed to Kimi Antonelli’s different results after starting from the back in recent races.

Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix after starting 19th. In Azerbaijan, starting 16th, he took 17 laps to climb back into the top 10; Russell said the younger driver was “driving like his grandmother” on the streets of Baku. “It's going to be very challenging,” Russell said. “Kimi obviously had one race starting in 19th and won, and another race in 16th and was only up to P10 with 10 laps remaining or whatever. Same driver, same car, but very different outcomes. So to answer your question, I really don't know.”