Lewis Hamilton backed Mercedes teammate George Russell to be the driver who will carry forward his legacy in Formula 1.
Russell made his F1 debut in 2019 with Williams after winning the previous year’s F2 Title. In his three seasons with Williams, he showed glimpses of how good he can be in an F1 car but his performances were limited to the back of the grid because of his car’s poor mechanical package.
In 2022, he finally completed his dream move to Mercedes. He joined a team that had completely dominated the sport for the last eight years, and people now expected him to challenge for race wins regularly. Unfortunately for him, Mercedes were not the force they once were.
The Silver Arrows did not cope well with the regulation changes, and Ferrari and Red Bull are now faster than them. However, he has been very consistent with his performances and outperformed his legendary teammate on several occasions. This led to people wondering if Hamilton considered Russell to be a rival.
Hamilton, meanwhile, mentioned that he would help Russell with all his might even before the latter joined the team.
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Lewis Hamilton wants George Russell to be the next World Champion
Hamilton shared his thoughts on a partnership with Russell when the 24-year-old’s move to Brackley was confirmed late last season. The seven-time World Champion insisted that he would do everything possible to help him settle into the team.
“I’m in a different place,” he said as quoted by Autosport. “I really want to see him succeed. There’s going to be a point where I don’t continue in this sport. He’s my team-mate and he’s going to be the next Brit that I want to see win a world championship.”
Russell on Lewis’ race data:
“There are some traits that he definitely carries that are really intriguing to me. I’m not gonna share those now because I’m the only driver on the grid that has the luxury of being teammates with the greatest driver of all time”
🎙Beyond The Grid pic.twitter.com/YmjqL1I2sk
— Sir Lewis Hamilton Updates (@SirLewisUpdates) June 29, 2022
“I really hope that, while we are going to be competing and I want to win on track, I hope I can have a positive influence on how he conducts himself within the team,” Hamilton continued. “Whether it’s the time he commits to engineering, or how he churns through the data, or how he drives on track.”
Hamilton said this before the season started. Even though Russell has had better results than him, there seems to be no animosity between the two and they both hold each other in very high regard.
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