After Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri qualified second and third for the British GP, Russell rightly predicted after qualifying that McLaren also had good race pace, and that the orange cars would not fade on Sunday.
Norris eventually finished second having held off Russell's team-mate Lewis Hamilton, while Oscar Piastri took fourth after losing out to Hamilton by pitting before the safety car.
Russell pointed out that McLaren had already shown impressive speed at the previous race in Austria and admitted that Mercedes has to find some performance.
"I see no reason why they shouldn't be up there now,” he said of the Woking team. “We've come from Red Bull Ring, which is a very different circuit to Silverstone. And they were a small step ahead of us on both occasions.
“So I don't know how they're found this much performance. It's been quite surprising. We don't tend to focus too much on our competitors. We just need to keep focusing on ourselves.
“Yes, it gives us inspiration that it can be possible, but we need to try and turn it up and we need to find more performance and quick."
Source: Autosport