Russell, whose fortunes contrasted dramatically with those of team-mate and pole winner Lewis Hamilton, admitted that he was hampered badly by traffic.
He was caught out as he tried to start his lap in the first part of qualifying, noting that the gentleman's agreement about drivers not passing each other was not respected by some of his rivals.
"My whole session was on track at the wrong time, wrong points, taking way too much risk as a team," he said when asked by Autosport after his tricky session.
"The car was so quick, we didn't need to fuel for one lap and go right at the end and in loads of traffic, but I was trying to respect the gentleman's agreement and got overtaken by a couple of cars, most notably Pierre [Gasly], who overtook me at the final corner.
"I was three tenths down before I even started, and the lap was gone. So not going to blame any of the drivers, we're all fighting for ourselves. As a team, we should have done a much better job."
Asked if he thought the gentleman's agreement was no longer valid, he said: "I don't think that it was ever really there, to be honest, and in all honestly I probably would have done the same if I was in their shoes.
"You've got to fight for yourself. But the track is big enough, it's 4.5km long and we're using a space of one kilometre with 10 cars, so we just need to look in the mirror and recognise that we made a big cock up today."
Source: Autosport