MADRID -- George Russell has admitted he's going to need a bout of good luck if he's going to overcome and beat his teammate Kimi Antonelli in the world championship.
Antonelli, who turned 20 in August, is currently leading the championship by 66 points to Russell and has amassed seven wins to Russell's two so far this season.
Russell managed to put his Mercedes in a strong position to compete for a win at the Italian Grand Prix last time out, but Antonelli stormed from 17th on the grid to win the race after suffering an engine penalty.
The Englishman spoke about being on the wrong side of luck before the summer break after several reliability failures, but the word is now lingering on his lips again.
"I definitely need some luck and I need some good performances," Russell said during Thursday's news conference ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix. "It is not something I am thinking about. Kimi is performing better than me and he deserves to be leading the championship.
"There is still a long way to go, but he is yet to have a bad weekend in terms of performance. He is performing exceptionally well.
"My performances are better than they were before the summer break, but if I am going to win the world championship, I will need some luck along the way. I am not focused on that. I am focused on driving faster."
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With only 10 rounds left of the season, Russell has acknowledged that his performances in Monza and at the Dutch Grand Prix before that were his strongest so far this season.
He qualified second in Monza and it was one of his best chances to close the gap to his teammate, but ended up second on the podium. In Zandvoort, he qualified in the same position and finished third.
"I think the last two races, for me, have arguably been two of my strongest weekends as a whole, over the course of the whole weekend and this whole season, so I'm sort of pleased with that, but of course, I still need to keep on making some improvements," he added.
"I've qualified ahead of him [Antonelli] in the three qualifying sessions, and my race pace has been on a par with him in these two races. I couldn't say that pre-break. So, as I said, I'm definitely very pleased with that progression.
"We'll have to see where the rest of the season takes us."
