Russell: Verstappen and Leclerc 'a step ahead' of everyone

George Russell believes Mercedes can take the fight to the podium contenders in Sunday's French Grand Prix, but insists front-row starters Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen are "a step ahead" of the field.

Russell qualified sixth in Saturday's shootout at Paul Ricard, a massive 1.259s behind pacesetter Leclerc and two positions behind his Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton.

While the Brackley squad's position in the pecking order was expected, the significant gap between its drivers and F1's Ferrari and Red Bull frontrunners was more than anticipated.

"Personally, I had a good start to Q3, I was in P4 and just made a mistake on my last lap," Russell explained.

"At the end of the day, I think the time gap to the front is more concerning than the position.

"We need to understand it, as we're the only team on the grid that closes the gap to the front on a Sunday compared to a Saturday. All the other gaps extend, and we manage to reduce it.

"It’s the right way around for it to be, that’s how we prefer it. But obviously it’s put us in tricky spots for a lot of this year."

• Read also: Mercedes performance 'just not good enough' admits Wolff

Assessing Mercedes' prospects for Sunday's race, Russell reckons the German outfit can battle with Perez, but Leclerc and Verstappen will most likely remain out of reach.

"The high fuel pace was relatively competitive, we should have a chance against Checo," Russell said.

"And even if Carlos was there we probably would have had a chance against Carlos. But Max and Charles are a step ahead of everyone else at the moment."

Mercedes engineering boss Andrew Shovlin believes opportunities may open up for the team in the race as tyre degradation is set to play a major role in Paul Ricard's scorching hot environment.

"We don't really have an answer as to why the gaps were so large but at least we are not too far down the order," commented Shovlin.

"We're hoping that the race pace is stronger, which has been a general trend of our car although we didn't do enough laps on Friday to get a good read on this.

"The race is going to be tough on the tyres though, the degradation we have seen up and down the field is higher than we expected and the forecast is for track temps over 50°C.

"Hopefully we'll be stronger than today and looking forwards not backwards but regardless, we're learning more and more each time we run the car and it's all an important part of us getting back to where we want to."

"That may create some opportunity but it's hard to set our expectations without knowing where the long run pace will fall out."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter