Seeing Albon’s, Norris’ success in rookie season “difficult”

George Russell admitted that seeing Alexander Albon’s and Lando Norris’ performance in their rookie F1 season was “difficult to digest” for him.

Russell made his F1 debut in 2019 alongside Albon and Norris. Albon started his career in Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) and then was promoted to Red Bull later in the season, and Norris joined McLaren. Meanwhile, Russell began his F1 path at Williams which was arguably the slowest team on the grid at that time.

Russell revealed that seeing Albon’s and Norris’ results were not easy for him.

“That was a really unique season for my first year in Formula 1, joining Williams and a team that was on the brink of bankruptcy. Every single race weekend, it was racing to survive – it wasn’t racing to perform, the team was racing to survive and the 800 people’s jobs [were] at stake,” the Briton said on the High Performance Podcast.

“There was no doubt when I got to the first race in Australia, I’m here in Formula 1 – one dream accomplished – and go out on track and we’re four seconds off the pace, the car’s falling apart, and we’ re being lapped two or three times. You kind of think to yourself, ‘Is this the dream?’. But I think I’ve always had quite a rational view of things.

“And while seeing Alex in a Red Bull scoring podium and being the man, to a degree, and Lando equally always in the points, that was sort of difficult to digest. Because I’d just come from Formula 2 where I beat them.”