George Russell delivered an impressive performance in his first year at the Mercedes F1 team in the 2022 season. Team boss Toto Wolff believes that the young Briton has the traits of a future world champion.
Russell finally got the opportunity to move up the grid, after she spent three years on the Williams F1 team. Even at Williams, the 24-year-old’s performance was lauded by his crew as he outperformed his teammate on several occasions.
Despite the problems with the W13, Russell scored top-five finishes in 19 of the 22 races and he even brought home a victory in Brazil.
Speaking about his form, Wolff said that Russell is very self-critical of his own performance and it is one of the assets that make him a future world champion.
Wolff further added that Russell now is a part of the Mercedes Works team and with the car developing, it is clear that the final results will be very different.
George Russell vs Lewis Hamilton
Russell has been tipped as a future world champion before the 2022 season it was predicted that Russell might be able to give his 7-time world champion a challenge in the run for the title.
But with Mercedes turning up on the wrong side of the new technical regulations with their W13, Hamilton was mostly left with experimenting with different setups with the car and making improvements.
Meanwhile, Russell capitalised on whatever he had and grabbed as many top-five finishes as he could and even his maiden victory in Sao Paulo.
With Hamilton’s consistency, experience and Russell’s hunger for a title, it will be exciting to see how the tables turn inside the Silver Arrows camp once they have competitive machinery.
two full minutes of george russell calling lewis hamilton the goat? say no more! enjoy 🥂 pic.twitter.com/AW8fDI1Tie
— f 🦋 (@63WILS0N) July 18, 2022
Experience at Williams helped the young Briton
With Mercedes falling down in the grid position to the midfield, the team suffered a lot of issues. A few of the major ones are porpoising and lack of pace.
The Brackley-based team saw an end to its 8-year of dominance in the sport and finished P3 in the constructors’ title.
But Russell was still able to get the most out of the W13 and get points finishes while Hamilton tried out different set-ups.
Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ chief engineer believes that Russell’s experience of driving cars that lacked performance helped him get the grip of W13 more easily than Hamilton.
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