George Russell makes bleak Mercedes comment as concerns grow before Mexican Grand Prix

has provided a glum preview of ' weekend at the , explaining that the Silver Arrows don't expect to 'set the world on fire' at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Last weekend's race at the Circuit of the Americas was one to forget for the Mercedes crew. Russell crashed out during Q3 in qualifying and was forced to start from the pit lane, while Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in Q1 and went on to spin out of the Grand Prix on lap three.

While Russell did produce a stellar comeback drive to finish sixth, ahead of Red Bull's Sergio Perez, the team's performance relative to Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren highlighted just how far Mercedes have to go to return to regular race-win contention.

The upcoming race in Mexico has always been a hit-and-miss track for Mercedes - even in their turbo-hybrid era heyday - and Russell doesn't expect a drastic change in fortunes this weekend. "Having reviewed everything as a team, I think we were just sailing too close to the wind," he said, previewing Sunday's race.

"We know how aggressively you need to set up for this era of cars, how low to the ground you need to run them, how stiff you need to run them, and I think clearly it caught both myself and Lewis out over the weekend.

"On the flip side, there were definitely glimmers of really strong performance in there. We know we need to be more conservative with the set-up. That may hinder the performance so we're going into this weekend with an open mind.

"Lewis will be on the new upgrades, I'll be on the old package because we don't have two sets of it, and we'll see how we get on. I'm not expecting, unfortunately, to set the world on fire this weekend."

Hamilton's comments were also telling. The Brit's optimism for the weekend was based more on hope than expectation. "The car was unstable last week but it was a very bumpy track," the seven-time world champion said.

"This is not a bumpy track so hopefully on a smoother circuit we won't have the same problems. If we don't have the problems we had last week then yeah, maybe we can be a little bit closer to the front. It's all a big if and I'm just hoping for the positive."