George Russell will head to Mexico this week in a very different frame of mind than he did 12 months ago.

He had just signed a contract extension with Mercedes, finally seeing off the spectre of Max Verstappen which had stalked him for the best part of two years. He was in a great place. Like the rest of the grid, Russell had an inkling that he was going to be blessed with a championship-winning machine in 2026.

And with considerably more experience under his belt than his then rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli, who he was dominating in the championship, Russell was in Position A.

Over a game of padel at the Centro Deportivo Chapultepec, followed by lunch at his hotel, Russell explained to Telegraph Sport why he felt he was ready to deliver.

“Sometimes I think you just have to trust in your ability and I feel I’m only getting stronger,” he argued. It was hard to disagree. On track perhaps only Verstappen was more consistent than Russell last season.

Fast forward 12 months and Russell has a very different air about him. The confidence has been sucked out of him. The haunted look he wore at the end of Sunday’s United States Grand Prix, where the 28-year-old finished a distant eighth, miles off the pace of Antonelli, is one he has adopted all too often this season. Russell had no answers, no explanations. “I need to give it 24 hours to think clearly,” he said. “I need to dig deep with my team because it is difficult to understand when you are so far off.”

It is hard to see Russell like this. The truth is, he got his wish. He was given his championship-winning car this year. But it was Antonelli who made the most of it, making a quantum leap in terms of his own performance and consistency.
Russell has suffered some dismal luck. He was handed another tough break in Austin when the stewards awarded him a five-second penalty for gaining an advantage off track on the opening lap.

“I’m not sure what they [the stewards] were smoking,” David Coulthard, the former driver, sympathised after the race. But Russell was in no mood to sugar-coat things. “The penalty was a bit ridiculous, but that was the least of my worries after such a bad weekend,” he admitted.

It is good that he is honest with himself.

Russell is sometimes accused by F1 fans of whingeing too much or looking for excuses. In my experience that is not the case at all.

Russell was right to point to all the bad luck he suffered in the first part of the year: the gearbox gremlins during qualifying in China, the ill-timed safety car in Suzuka, the power unit failure in Montreal. Those are facts. It might have been a very different story had he been able to apply more pressure on Antonelli in the first half of the season.

Russell was right, too, to observe, when finishing second in Monza, that while Antonelli’s drive from the back of the grid was exceptional, the cards fell perfectly in the Italian’s favour there. If they had started on the front row together, that race would have been very close.

The worry is there have been far too many races where he has not been able to point to any obvious reasons for his struggles: Miami, Monaco, Austin, etc.

Helmut Marko, as is his style, stuck the knife into the Briton during the weekend. “Russell is no longer the No 1 driver [at Mercedes],” the former Red Bull adviser told Sky Deutschland. “I doubt whether he’ll ever have another chance at the world title or be given No 1 status anywhere.”

That blunt comment prompted a rebuke from Marko’s fellow Austrian, Toto Wolff. “I think he’s [Marko] wrong on George,” the Mercedes team principal said. “George has all the ability. I think the car doesn’t suit him. I think that at the beginning of the season it’s difficult to cope with a situation where you’re feeling like ‘this is my year to come’, and then you have this wunderkind on the other side that starts to really chip away.

“And I believe that in a new season, George, if we provide him a quick car, has absolutely what it needs to win a championship.”

Russell must keep believing that. He must keep believing in himself. This season has been a significant setback, but he has not become a slow driver overnight. The car’s operating window is very small and Antonelli has done a much better job of accessing it. But there is no reason to suggest Mercedes will favour the Italian next year. Nico Rosberg’s title success in 2016 should serve as a reminder that the Brackley team give their drivers a fair crack.

Rosberg’s bloody-mindedness should also serve as an example to Russell that if you keep believing in yourself, you can win, even against generational talents.

As the sport heads to Mexico, ready to lay on a fiesta for the likeable Antonelli, it will not be easy for Russell. He will be asked endlessly why that is not him up there, whether he can come back from this.

Last year, Russell went incognito in free practice one, wearing a Lucha Libre wrestling mask and sitting in the stands at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez to experience what it was like on that side of the fence. Much as he might be tempted to do the same this year, he needs to stand tall. He needs to keep believing in himself.