George Russell finishes in fifth place in the Mexico City Grand Prix

George Russell has shifted his focus towards setting himself up for next season after only his eighth top five finish of the current campaign in Mexico.

Russell's weekend was beset by issues as a major crash in practice left him with a car made from old-spec parts and he spent the second stint of the race fighting with a damaged front wing.

However, the Mexico City race weekend had started on a high for Russell as he topped the opening practice session although things went downhill from there.

In the second practice session (an extended Pirelli tyre test), Russell brought out the red flags as the driver from Tydd St Giles had a 35G impact with the wall which left him in the medical centre after his second major crash in as many race weekends.

Once Russell had received the all-clear, his struggles continued as the crash damage to his car was repaired with old parts due to the cost cap restrictions which left the Mercedes driver on the back foot and consequently eighth in the final practice session of the weekend.

During qualifying, things seemed to be on the up for Russell as he easily made it through the first two stages by being consistently in the top three.

However, in the qualifying session which mattered, both Mercedes drivers failed to improve on their times and Russell ended up fifth - ahead of his team-mate Lewis Hamilton for the 15th time this season.

Starting on the medium tyre, Russell was overtaken by his team-mate on turn one and any chances of retaking fifth place were scuppered by an early safety car, however, once racing had resumed the 24-year-old was back in front.

Up ahead, reigning world champion Max Verstappen was causing chaos with McLaren's Lando Norris which netted the Dutchman 20 seconds worth of penalties and gave Russell the upper hand going into the first round of pit stops.

On lap 32, Russell pitted to switch to the hard tyre and emerged in sixth ahead of Verstappen and Hamilton and then began to overtake the cars ahead of him to regain position.

However, Russell hit a bump when he was attempting to pass the McLaren of Oscar Piastri which caused front wing damage to his Mercedes and left him at a disadvantage for the rest of the race.

Despite this, Russell made his way up to fourth place before he came under pressure from Hamilton who was closing in to within a second of him.

Russell fended off the threat from Hamilton for 12 laps, however, in the final throes of the race he had to concede to take fifth place.

Russell said: "I had a strong first stint but I hit a bump as I overtook Oscar Piastri at the start of my second stint and picked up some front-wing damage.

"It was definitely costing me a couple of tenths a lap in terms of performance which was a bit of a shame.

"We had to do more than 30 laps carrying that but, even without it, we wouldn't have had the speed to challenge for the podium.

"Overall, fourth and fifth is likely where we deserved to be as a team and perhaps a little bit better than we thought going into the race.

"We will keep working hard to improve as we want to be battling right at the front.

"We continue to make progress with the car, as you can see with the gap increasing to the teams behind us in the championship.

"We’ve also closed the gap on Red Bull since the start of the season but it's clear that Ferrari and McLaren have made even more progress.

"We will use these final four races of the season to continue building our learning, test different things out, and set ourselves up well for next year."

The 2024 Formula One season continues this weekend (November 1-3) for the São Paulo Grand Prix - the race at which Russell took his first win two years ago.