George Russell returned to public view in Sao Paulo on Thursday four days after leaving the Mexico City track just as Kimi Antonelli's Formula 1 World Championship celebrations got under way.

With the permission of Mercedes, Russell skipped his mandatory media commitments on Sunday evening, something that earned his team a standard £4,170 fine.

His early departure wasn't about Antonelli formally clinching a title that in reality slipped from Russell's grasp some months ago, but rather the sheer frustration after an engine software glitch hampered his progress at the race start, costing him a shot at victory.

That robbed him of any consolation for seeing the title claimed by his team-mate.

'The championship was inevitably going to Kimi,' he said in Brazil. 'I was just very disappointed with what happened for me at the start of the race. I felt excited for the race. I was in a good position to fight for the lead at Turn 1, and then obviously it just all unravelled with another issue outside of our control.'

Russell explained why he opted to leave: 'In racing, you always pick yourself back up, and for me, I felt the best way to put myself back up was getting out of there, and it's as simple as that, really.

'I was just very upset with missing out on the chance of a good result because, as I said, the championship for me, it was already over. But I just couldn't believe how things had panned out again. And in that moment, I just wanted to get out of there.'

Russell is now hoping for redemption at the venue where he scored a memorable first win back in 2022.

Meanwhile, just four days after Antonelli was crowned, the F1 paddock is in mourning for one of his predecessors. Feisty Australian Alan Jones, who earned the Williams team its first World Championship title in 1980, has passed away at the age of 80 after a short illness.