Mercedes star George Russell admits he wants to finish above team-mate Lewis Hamilton in this season’s Drivers’ Championship standings. Russell secured a Silver Arrows F1 seat ahead of the 2022 season and is currently 27 points above the seven-time world champion with four Grands Prix remaining.
“If you asked me that at the start of the season I probably would have said it means everything because if you beat Lewis Hamilton it means you’ll be world champion,” Russell told Sky Sports F1 ahead of the United States Grand Prix.
“Obviously I want to finish ahead of him, of course. I’m here to win races and be on pole position and I want to fight for championships. It is everything on the line at the minute to try and achieve that.
“There are examples like in Montreal when I took the gamble on the slicks. If I just wanted to beat my team-mate I would have stayed out on the wets and made sure that was my focus but we had to roll the dice. It will be the same tomorrow, we are going to be focused on the guy at the front to try and win the race tomorrow – that’s the mentality.”
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Hamilton’s F1 dominance means he has rarely had to worry about a team-mate finishing ahead of him in the standings. But he hasn’t always finished above his colleagues over the years. In 2011 – three years after he had already won his maiden title – Hamilton finished three places behind McLaren team-mate Jenson Button. And in 2016 – after he had just won back-to-back championships with Mercedes – Hamilton missed out on another title as Nico Rosberg claimed silverware. So Hamilton will be desperate to avoid a repeat with Russell.
Russell originally joined Mercedes as a junior driver in 2017, before spending three years driving for Williams. But he penned a three-year deal to become Hamilton’s F1 team-mate last September and reportedly saw his salary increase five-fold from £1million to £5million.
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Mercedes have struggled with porpoising issues this year after teams were forced to redesign their cars over the winter amid a whole host of F1 regulation changes. But Russell has dealt with the problems better than Hamilton and has at times taken the opportunity to illustrate exactly why Mercedes turned their back on former driver Valtteri Bottas to hand the 24-year-old a seat.
Russell is yet to win a Grand Prix this year but has secured seven podium finishes to rise to fourth in the standings. Hamilton, who has finished on the podium six times this term, is sixth in the standings, with Ferrari ace Carlos Sainz sandwiched between the pair. But with plenty of points still to play for, Hamilton will be looking to finally topple his team-mate in the coming weeks.
