Mercedes driver George Russell says he is "not even thinking" about a Formula 1 title comeback as his accepting Kimi Antonelli's 66-point advantage will be tough to overcome.
With Antonelli starting 19th in Monza and Russell second, the Briton had a golden opportunity to eat into his 59-point deficit to the Italian. But Antonelli swiftly moved up the order, vaulting up to sixth after the lap 6 restart and used that as a springboard to challenge Russell for the win.
After initially passing Russell on lap 19 and trading places a few more times, Antonelli used a virtual safety car to make a cheap pitstop for new medium tyres, reeling in hard-tyre running Russell when the latter's tyres started fading at the end of the 53-lap race.
Antonelli's comeback win was his seventh grand prix victory of the season, increasing the 20-year-old's title lead to 66 points rather than having to limit any damage to Russell.
That huge blow appeared to knock Russell into the acceptance stage, acknowledging that catching his Italian team-mate over the next 10 grands prix will be a tall order.
"Yeah, Kimi's definitely in control of it and he's deserving to be in control of it," Russell admitted. "I'm not even thinking about a fight or a comeback or anything. I'm just focused on taking it race by race and trying to maximise every single weekend.
"He's performing incredibly well. It's going to be exceptionally challenging to overcome that gap, so I'm just sort of accepting that is what it is. I'm just going to enjoy it from here on in and try and win as many races as possible."
Russell saw no bones in Mercedes splitting its strategies as he had started on medium tyres and then moved to the hard tyres for the majority of the race.
Having to start down the order, Antonelli opted for the hard compound instead, moving to mediums under the red flag. Antonelli looked set to struggle to either bring those tyres to the end, or challenge Russell without the benefit of a virtual safety car which gave him a less costly opportunity to pit.
"Well, [the hard] was definitely the best tyre to take to the end," Russell said.
"When I saw Max [Verstappen] and Kimi on the medium, I was feeling pretty good because I knew they were going to drop off more than me, so in that middle stage of the race, I was really happy with my position.
"The VSC came out at that perfect point for the drivers to pull the trigger and take the pitstop. It would have been very interesting to see how the race would have panned out if there was no VSC."
