Russell 'feels ready to fight for a championship'

George Russell is fourth in the drivers' championship, 36 points behind third-placed Max Verstappen

Mercedes driver George Russell says he "feels ready to fight for a championship" after taking a dominant victory in the Singapore Grand Prix.

Russell's second win of the season, following success in Canada in June, came on the same track on which he had crashed out of third place on the final lap while chasing a victory in 2023.

He finished ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen with McLaren's Lando Norris third and championship leader Oscar Piastri fourth.

"I'm a very different driver today to the one I was a couple of years ago, and I feel more complete, more confident," Russell said.

"I know exactly what I need to do in given circumstances.

"Of course, I was nervous before the race, as you'd expect, but I didn't feel any additional nerves or any additional pressure. It just felt like another race, and I knew I had a chance to win, and I felt comfortable with that.

"So I've said it for a while - I feel ready to fight for a championship. I feel ready to take it to my next step."

Russell put his improvement this year down to "experience, just knowing how to maximise every situation".

He added: "Probably a couple of years ago I was driving a bit more tense and probably over-pushing in circumstances when I shouldn't have been.

"Now I just feel much more relaxed. Going into today, I was relaxed.

"When it was raining an hour before the race, I just said: 'You know, it is what it is. It's the same for everybody. There's nothing I can do, so there's no point stressing about it.' Myself a few years ago would have been slightly different."

Russell said he believed Singapore had been "probably my most dominant weekend" but hesitated to categorise it as his best win, saying last year's victory in Las Vegas was "pretty cool".

He also said that winning in Singapore had been "so unexpected" - Mercedes have had a difficult run of races and their second place in the constructors' championship was coming under threat.

He said: "We need to sit down tomorrow and Tuesday to sort of understand why the performance was so good."

Russell won pole by 0.182 seconds from Verstappen, although the Dutchman felt he would have been in contention to beat his time if he had not run into dirty air from Lando Norris' McLaren on his final lap and slid wide at the final chicane.

Russell's drive to victory was helped by Verstappen's choice to run soft tyres at the start of the race.

Once Russell kept the lead at the first corner, it meant Verstappen lacked the pace to challenge him. And he held back Norris' McLaren, which looked to have the pace to challenge Russell, for the rest of the race.

"Realistically, Lando looked incredibly fast," Russell said. "He was within a second of Max the whole race. And around this circuit, that's not easy. So, we'll take the performance for today, celebrate it, and I won't think too much about (the next race in) Austin yet."

Russell contract agreement expected soon

The Singapore Grand Prix was designated F1's first 'heat hazard' race, with temperatures of 30C and humidity of 72%

Russell is out of contract at the end of this season and his future at Mercedes next year was in some doubt earlier in the season as team principal Toto Wolff pursued Verstappen.

But after Verstappen committed to Red Bull in the wake of the sacking of former team principal Christian Horner, Wolff and Russell have consistently said it was only a matter of time before he signed a new deal.

Russell and Wolff have not yet reached an agreement on the terms of a new contract but it is expected to come in the next few weeks, and may even be announced before the United States Grand Prix on 17-19 October.

Wolff said after the race: "He's been formidable this year. I haven't seen mistakes. There were weekends (in previous seasons) that he himself said he could have done more and that it wasn't a good race.

"But this happens with any driver. You can see when it merges the car being in a perfect space and the driver being on top of things. That becomes the dominant formula and that is what we've seen here.

"Contract-wise, good things take a while. It's about the detail and it's not about the big topics."