Russell had a difficult start to qualifying when he crashed on his first lap after locking up on the entry to the long Luffield right-hander.
Although the incident broke his front wing, he was able to return to the pits for repairs and get back out to qualify for the second session.
Bur he lagged behind Antonelli throughout, and although there was less than 0.1secs separating the Mercedes drivers after their first runs, the gap opened when Russell did not improve and Antonelli lopped 0.274secs off his.
Russell said: “Yesterday I was confused, but looking at the data we realised I was losing all my speed on the straight.
“Yesterday it was a couple of tenths. We thought we’d found the issue in the morning, but it turned out to be a bit of a bum read and same again today.
“Just looking at the speed traps I was about 6km/h down in the last sector, 3km/h down in the mid-sector. Not just to Kimi, to all the Mercedes-powered cars. We don’t know what’s going on. The team are working hard to find out what it is but it makes it frustrating. At the moment we don’t know what the issue is or how we’re going to resolve it.”
Verstappen said he was also suffering with a mystery straight-line speed issue.
“Two things, the whole session: Of course not a good balance but at the same time terribly slow on the straight for whatever reason, even compared to the other car,” he said.
“We couldn’t fix it from the first run to the end. When you are slow on the straight here, you are more full throttle, you burn more battery and it is just like a spiral and it gets worse and worse to the end of the lap. It’s like a double whammy. It’s very painful. It’s something we need to understand for tomorrow.”
Norris, who won this race on his way to the title last year, was 0.766secs off pole said McLaren were just struggling for pace
“It was pretty poor in terms of gap to the cars ahead,” he said. “I thought my lap was pretty good. It was my best lap by 0.5secs so thankfully I was not 1.3secs off.
“It was a good lap. I got I think everything out of it. We are just slow in the straight, slow in every corner, the air is not very efficient, we lack downforce and we have too much drag. We are in a bit of a pickle.”
Lindblad out-qualified team-mate Lawson for the first time since Canada in May and was pleased to have produced the strong performance he had hoped for on his British Grand Prix debut, although felt he could perhaps have gone a little faster.
“Overall, it’s good,” he said. “The team have given us a fast car, both cars in Q3.
“It wasn’t as plain sailing as I would have hoped. It wasn’t easy in Q1. I wasn’t particularly happy with the car but the engineers and everyone on my side of the garage did a really good job and we chipped away to get the car in a good window.
“Part of me is a little bit sad I did the same lap three times, because I feel like there was a little bit more in it, but realistically the top teams are too far ahead that I don’t think P8 was achievable.”
