The British racer has impressed during his time in the sport but has been unable to fight for the world championship at Mercedes and admits that his long wait for a title shot means he will be fired up when or if the opportunity does come.

Russell told Autosport: "I'm definitely more hungry than ever just to try and perform.

"I would have hoped by now, seven seasons in, I would have at least had a year of fighting for a championship. When I joined Mercedes, we thought every year would be a championship fight. Unfortunately, it hasn't turned out that way."

However, Russell cited examples from both past and present to show that anything is possible in F1.

The four-time Grand Prix winner said: "Arguably, nobody would have predicted two years ago McLaren would have made this step. Lando (Norris) did five years with them and had no (title) fights either. So, you've just got to accept the fact that this is the nature of F1. That's always been the case.

"And you look at Michael Schumacher, he was in his fifth year at Ferrari, in his 30s, before he won a championship with them. I'm 27, so I've still got a bit of time on my side."

Russell sits fourth in the championship this season but feels Mercedes are going through a testing period after some impressive results at the start of the year.

The driver, who won the Canadian Grand Prix in June, said: "We clearly have struggled in hot races. At the start of the year we were in spring, and now we're in summer, that's another factor.

"I think everything was just sort of going our way at the start of the year, to be honest."

Russell added: "I had four podiums in the first six, but probably only two of them were truly deserved, I would say. Obviously, Melbourne was (Oscar) Piastri going off. In Miami, we had the VSC playing into our hands.

"Then the China P3 result was a fair result and Bahrain was a great result. That was the best race of the year, probably, except Canada."