Mercedes’ rising star, George Russell, delivered a phenomenal performance in his debut year with the Silver Arrows. Having gathered more points than the seven-time champion, while also securing the only win for the team, made many believe that Russell may be a better racer than Lewis Hamilton altogether. However, Toto Wolff shunned the claims stating that this year was ‘not relevant.’

Toto Wolff has been the kind of boss that stands behind his drivers and gives them the support they need. As speculations of George overshadowing Hamilton arose in the F1 world, Toto was quick to nip them in the bud. Toto believes that the comparison isn’t a fair one, as people are unaware of the big picture.

According to Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton, being the senior most driver in the team with experience and immense knowledge has been involved with learning, focusing, and developing the W-13 to be its best version, which wasn’t the case with George Russell. As most know, the W-13 was a troublesome car for the Silver Arrows since the beginning of this season with its issues with porpoising and such.

In an interview, Toto said, “Lewis sees the big picture and sacrificed a lot at the start of the season, more than half of the season in fact to find the settings, to understand the W13, to help the engineers, to test sometimes crazy things for development,” he continued.

“It is therefore not relevant to compare their results this year because Lewis lost a lot of points by driving with sometimes absurd car configurations, just to understand and move forward.”

“Last year was much worse. Last year a title was stolen from us as I said. This year we lost it because we didn’t deserve it. We weren’t just not good enough.” he said, in conclusion. [Translated by Google].

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As Toto Wolff comes forward in defense of the seven-time world champion, George Russell celebrates his win to the fullest.

George Russell believes that he can be a world champion post his maiden F1 win

Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, is grateful for having underperformed as a team this season as he believes that sometimes defeat is necessary to revive motivation.

He believes that even though the battle next year is going to be hard, Silver Arrows will be strong enough to compete for the championship. George Russell, on the other hand, is extremely happy with his win and believes he could be world champion one day.

In an interview, George talked about his performance in comparison to his teammate, Hamilton. He said, “If you had told me that at the start of the season I would finish ahead of him, I would have been incredibly proud and incredibly happy with that, because nine times out of 10 if you finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton, you are probably going to be world champion.”

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Mercedes is planning to come in strong for the upcoming season. However, with Russell’s recent win, would the battle culminate into an in-house struggle of Mercedes?