George Russell believes an extra lap of fuel cost him pole position for the Mexican Grand Prix after he missed out to his former team-mate and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton by just 0.009 seconds.

The Mercedes driver will start alongside Hamilton on the front row, with Charles Leclerc in third. Russell explained that his rivals had not done preparation laps on their final Q3 runs, while Mercedes had stuck with a preparation lap to get temperature into the tyres.

"Not easily at all, to be honest," Russell explained during the post-qualifying press conference when asked how easily the lap came together for him.

"It's a little bit of a story of my season. I think this kind of feels like I've never done an average lap. It's either a terrible lap or a very strong lap, and this is quite frustrating.

"I don't think there was a single lap this whole weekend ahead of Q3 that I looked in the mix to even fight for the top three, let alone pole position. But that last lap just came together really nicely. I'd love to know exactly why, but I don't have those answers."

He added: "I saw Lewis [Hamilton] and Charles [Leclerc] and Max [Verstappen] as well. They weren't doing the prep lap. We were doing prep laps, just getting the temperature of the tyre. It's quite challenging.

George Russell, Mercedes

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"My gut told me we could do it on lap one without the preparation, but the team wanted to do the prep, so we ended up carrying the fuel for an extra lap. It's such a small number, but it's bigger than the gap to pole.

"So, it's obviously... you always think retrospectively, if only we had the one lap of fuel rather than the extra lap of fuel that we had, we could have been on pole. But I'm very grateful to be in this position because it's been a tough run. And, like I said straight out of the car, I know it's in there. I've never doubted that it's in there. It's just understanding why this season we can't achieve it as consistently as I have done in the past."

Russell currently sits second in the drivers' standings, 123 points behind his team-mate and championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who has the opportunity to claim the title this weekend. But the 28-year-old is under pressure to retain P2 as Hamilton sits just one point behind, and only nine points separate P2 and P5.