Russell: I'm not really concerned about which of the three will win the title.

      When George Russell is reminded that he still remains among the title contenders, he just smiles and refuses to elaborate on the subject, because he believes the championship will be won by one of the drivers from the top three. At the same time, according to the British Mercedes driver, he is not very concerned about who exactly will take the title.

      George Russell: "I wouldn't say I'm proud of being fourth in the standings, but still, in almost every race we have managed to achieve the best possible result, and that's already a reason to be proud. However, this past weekend we performed worse, so I left Austin feeling some disappointment.

      But with such tight results you can never be certain of success. Last weekend in qualifying the gap between second and fourth was just over two hundredths – probably that difference determined whether you'd make the podium or not."

      The fight for the title is intensifying as Max Verstappen is rapidly closing the gap on the McLaren drivers who occupy the top two spots in the standings. When George was asked whose place he'd prefer to be in in this situation, he smiled and replied:

      "Probably still in the shoes of the McLaren guys, because they have the fastest cars and they have the most to lose. Of course, Max and Red Bull are performing brilliantly right now and can never be written off. At the start of the year there were also signs they were capable of great pace, but they clearly lacked consistency, whereas now for more than a week they have been simply crushing all their rivals.

      I wish all three of them luck, and I'm not too bothered about which of the three ultimately wins the title – I'm more concerned with us having a good Mexican weekend.

      In a race you never want to take maximal risks nor act overly conservatively. The mindset should be: if an opportunity to move forward appears, you must take it. If such opportunities don't arise – then you're not taking risks.

      There is very sharp competition among the top-three drivers, and the task is to show the highest possible results at every Grand Prix. But I can't talk about rivals, I can only talk about myself: I'm going to approach the remaining races exactly the same way as any other."