George Russell said he simply “needed to get out of there” after leaving Mexico early as another frustrating race piled the disappointment on top of watching team-mate Kimi Antonelli clinch the world championship.

After congratulating Antonelli, the 28-year-old was excused from post-race media duties in Mexico by Mercedes – for which they were fined 5,000 euros – with boss Toto Wolff saying his driver was “distraught” and suffering a “catastrophic moment”.

Russell started second but plummeted to sixth as his car appeared to lose power on the long run down to turn one.

It was a race that somewhat encapsulated his issue-hit season, while he has long admitted Antonelli has outperformed him during his march to the title.

Speaking for the first time since the Mexico race, Russell said: “I was just… in racing you always pick yourself back up and for me the best way to pick myself back up was getting out of there.

“It was as simple as that really. I was just very upset with missing out on the chance of a good result because the championship for me was already over but it was just… I just couldn’t believe how things had panned out again.

“In that moment, yeah, I just wanted to get out of there.

“I think I’m 99 per cent of the time a true professional and I try not to spit my dummy out but sometimes missing out on doing the press – OK, it’s not ideal but not the end of the world.

“Moments like that you don’t really want to deal with it.”

After his tough start to the race, Russell was then slapped with a 10-second penalty for bashing into Isack Hadjar and trudged home sixth, three places behind his celebrating team-mate.

Russell, the heavy pre-season title favourite, has won three races to Antonelli’s nine and slipped from second to fourth in the standings after last weekend – now only five ahead of Charles Leclerc in fifth.

The British driver says he has gone over the season and is determined to work with his team to find out why so many of his races have been undermined by problems.

“These issues constantly keep popping up but unfortunately this always seems like it’s on my side of the garage,” he added.

“We concluded we’ve only had six races from the 20 where we’ve had a clean weekend. So to think 14 of those weekends have had issues is unbelievable.

“We need to look to understand why that is, if there’s something we are overlooking or if it’s just pure misfortune. At the moment it does seem like it’s more misfortune than anything.

“In a normal season you might have two weekends or three weekends where there are issues, we’ve had three quarters of this season and that has been incredibly unfortunate.”

Russell posted on Instagram during the week, vowing to bounce back stronger next season.

He is not prepared to simply accept that misfortune has destroyed his first real chance of fighting for a world championship.

“It wasn’t meant to be this season but you also need to look at yourself in the mirror and think, ‘what could I have done better’?

“Is all of the misfortune truly misfortune? Or is it actually things in our control that could have been better?

“So you need to just have a deep, deep look in the mirror and pick yourself up again and go from there.”