George Russell opens up about his learnings from his more experienced teammate Lewis Hamilton as their time together at Mercedes develops.
George Russell moved to the Mercedes F1 team and teamed up with Lewis Hamilton after spending three years at Williams.
So far, Russell has had an encouraging start to his journey with the Brackley-based team. Despite the poor performance of the W13, Russell has outperformed Hamilton.
Currently, the 24-year-old stands 19 points ahead of the seven-time world champion in the championship standings.
He revealed that this encouraging start has boosted his confidence and he also pointed out how he is learning from Hamilton.
He said that it is clear that moving to a new team with an established driver is not easy.
“At the end of the day, this is Lewis’ territory. He’s been here for 10 years, he’s won however many championships with the team, and they’ve had so much success together, so I never thought it was going to be easy,” Russell said.
Asked if he has noticed Hamilton doing anything differently, the 24-year-old said, “There are some traits that he definitely carries that are really intriguing for me.”
“I’m not going to share those now, because I’m the only driver on this grid who has the luxury of being teammates with the greatest driver of all time.”
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George Russell learns from tennis to guide his career
Furthermore, Russell explained that instead of copying Hamilton’s traits, he wants to make the best out of himself by doing what is right for him. He made reference to tennis about the shared success of Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.
He said, “I think to be the best, or to at least be the best version of yourself, you shouldn’t go out there and copy what the best has done. He’s the best because he’s got the best out of himself .”
“In the world of tennis, who do you copy? Do you copy Nadal, Federer or Djokovic?
“Obviously in the world of motorsport there’s only Lewis for now, but that analogy made me think, you just need to do what’s right for you, as those three greats in tennis have done.
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