Alarm Bells Ring for Lewis Hamilton After Mercedes Gives an Honest Assessment of George Russell’s Rookie Season

In Formula 1, your teammate is always your benchmark. If you can’t close up to and beat him, then you might as well pack your bags. Mick Schumacher, after getting ousted from Haas, learned this the hard way. But for George Russell, well, his teammate is the 7x Champion Lewis Hamilton. But has the Brit risen up to this seemingly unsurmountable challenge yet?

George Russell is the kind of guy who’d jump into equal machinery alongside one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers ever and make it look easy. Or at least that’s what the upper echelons at Mercedes think. And they’ve got some data to back it up!

Putting Russell‘s entire season into perspective, Mercedes‘ motorsport strategy director, James Vowles, said, “I think on the whole it doesn’t really take us to tell you this but George did a very good job this year. Lewis was using his wealth of experience to help us in order to improve the car and really move us forward as a part of the team.”

“George in that period of time was just really focused on learning, embedding himself into the team and he scored a number of results really that benefited him as a result of that. Irrespective his qualifying pace I think is within a tenth of where Lewis ended up, his race pace was very, very strong throughout the year.”

Read More: 37-Year-Old Lewis Hamilton Proves His Harshest Critics Wrong Despite Uncharacteristic Winless Season

The possibility that Russell could very quickly overthrow Hamilton as Mercedes’ undisputed number 1 isn’t lost on the 7x Champion. That being said, for the time being, Hamilton really let that winning feeling sink in as his team did the seemingly impossible.

Mercedes’ George Russell triumph got Lewis Hamilton really emotional

When the 2022 season began, Mercedes were down in the dumps. However, many endless nights later, the boys and girls at Brackley delivered. At the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix, George Russell claimed his maiden F1 win. And in its aftermath, Lewis Hamilton got really emotional reminiscing the whole affair.

Hamilton told Channel 4, “I saw a video of my team when we got to Dubai (for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix). Just seeing everyone celebrating all together was quite an emotional thing, knowing how hard everyone had worked through the year.”

“Also knowing how difficult it would have been for them, knowing how hard they would have worked last winter and they were not rewarded for all the hard work they had put in necessarily.”

WATCH THIS STORY: New Lewis Hamilton F1 documentary coming to Apple TV+

Russell has had a breakthrough season with Mercedes in 2022. Is Hamilton’s undisputed reign over Mercedes’ crown finally coming to an end?