The beginnings of George Russell in Formula 1 were very desperate for him, because it could be easily seen that his level was far above a poor Williams, a team that was in its worst moment in all history.
The British driver came from sweeping the lower categories, proclaiming himself champion of the GP3 Series in Jerez in 2018, where he recognized that the objective was to reach the Great Circus and, above all, Mercedes replacing Valtteri Bottas, and only a year later in Abu Dhabi repeated to be the best in Formula 2, all with ART Grand Prix .
That earned him the confidence of the Silver Arrow boss Toto Wolff , who was able to guarantee him a place in the Grove structure for his debut in Formula 1, but from the first moment, his hopes of fighting for points, and even to go from a simple round in the classification, they were undone with the passing of the races.
However, at the time he signed his contract to make the jump to the highest category of motorsports, Russell thought it would be very different, since Williams was coming from a boom where they were fighting for podiums at the beginning of the era. hybrid, as revealed on the Beyond the Grid podcast.
“When we signed in 2018, they were a team that had just been on the podium for three seasons, finishing third and fifth in the constructors’ championship,” said the Briton. “Then they had a pretty bad year, where they were last.”
“At the time we thought it was a team that could hit back hard, and we agreed that three years was a good period to compete for points and maybe podiums,” explained the young Englishman.
“From what we know today, those three seasons were too long, but Claire [Williams, former team principal] had done a great job with the contract negotiations, and there was no way out,” George Russell said.
After several courses, the one from King’s Lynn achieved the feat that seemed unattainable for him, scoring points with the Grove team, which caused the driver to end up with tears in his eyes after crossing the finish line at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2021.
However, it was during his participation in the appointment on the alternative Sakhir track in 2020 due to Lewis Hamilton’s COVID-19 withdrawal that he managed to release his locker in Formula 1, a fantastic performance in which he showed that he was ready to climb to Mercedes, a team capable of fighting for the title.
When talking about his possible signing with the Silver Arrows, Russell acknowledged that this would not have been the best time to sign: “It would have been very difficult to go to Mercedes in 2020 or last year.”
“He would have had to race Lewis [Hamilton] with a car that had been made for him to drive for years, it was his baby, and now it’s a blank slate for everything, we’re starting all over again, so this was the time. adequate,” Russell said.
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