Have George Russell’s Sky-High Ambitions Messed With Lewis Hamilton’s F1 Goals?

Who knew that the 2021 season would become the darkest year in the life of Lewis Hamilton just because of the Abu Dhabi GP? Who knew the last lap heartbreak on Yas Marina was just the beginning of his misery? As it turns out, Mercedes had unknowingly guaranteed more misery for Hamilton in the long run. It stemmed from the appointment of George Russell from the 2022 season onwards.

The team signed a young ambitious driver who had spent the preliminary time with a bottom-feeder team and now was ready to fight at the front. This young driver now has ambitions for race wins, maximum points, podiums, pole portions, and eventually the championship. After finally getting his chance at a hugely successful team like Mercedes, he isn’t going to let anything or anybody stop him, not even Lewis Hamilton. That’s the kind of driver you sign when you want to challenge the existing driver and shake things up within a team. In this piece, we will try to substantiate how George Russell‘s sky-high ambitions are hampering Hamilton’s chances of winning the eighth championship from a personal perspective and not based on general opinion.

How George Russell’s inclusion in Mercedes has made life for Lewis Hamilton more miserable

Russell came on as a revelation for Mercedes in the 2022 season with consistent top-five finishes, whereas the seven-time world champion was struggling. However, the young Brit’s consistent points finish in the top five were doing more bad than good. The team, for the first time in five years, had a bad car and two drivers with completely different outputs. When it became clear Mercedes would not be able to fight for the championship, Hamilton turned his attention to figuring out what was wrong with the car and made himself the team’s guinea pig.

So while Hamilton was experimenting with the setup each race weekend, an opportunist Russell was collecting championship points race after race. Hamilton kept struggling and facing immense backlash from the world of F1 as many suggested and foresaw the Brit retiring from the sport, even as early as recently as June. However, Hamilton hasn’t given up and his persistence is what put Mercedes on the right developmental path. Although it could’ve been a little earlier, you want to know the reason behind the delay? George Russell.

Indirectly, Russell pushed Mercedes’s change in developmental path when he won the Brazilian GP. As mentioned earlier, Russell did not experiment much while the W13 continued to struggle. Whatever data Hamilton could help the team with resulted in a brilliant Brazilian GP where the young Brit secured the first race win of his career. This made the Brackley-based outfit pop champagne and see them rest a little easy in the winter and stick to their guns about the flawed zeropod design.

The same design that Hamilton never agreed with and wanted to see abandoned from the very start. The Brit’s wishes came true after a few races in 2023, but the setback was imminent and right in front of us.

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Mercedes was not competitive in 2023 as well and ended the season just like 2022, with just glimpses of hope with no real progress. This scenario could’ve been very different if only Mercedes had stuck to their old duo for a bit longer.

Mercedes jumped the gun on singing George Russell without taking Lewis Hamilton’s goal into consideration

Now we will talk about a shared opinion, and it might not be the most popular one. We know Mercedes decided to sign Russell in the middle of 2021 with no way of predicting how the rest of the season was going to turn out. However, the hurry to sign a young and upcoming driver to secure the team’s future put Hamilton in the state he’s in.

This is the opinion of F1 expert Peter Windsor as well. The British expert believes there was more synergy in the team and singing Russell ahead of the big regulation change completely threw the balance of the team off, which they had maintained when Valtteri Bottas was a part of the Brackley outfit.

Speaking in his 2023 Abu Dhabi GP round-up, he said, “I said it yesterday, I think that is a big handicap for a driver of a Mercedes which is a very unpredictable car at the best of times. You need every lap you can get in that car before the race starts and Lewis never had his confidence in it. He never really got over throughout the race distance and finished P9.”

“Sad to see from the point of view of the seven-time world champion who we know is a fabulous racing driver. If he was in a Red Bull this year or you know in a different situation maybe with Valtteri in the other car, I think we would’ve seen a different Lewis,“ he concluded.

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We can’t help but agree with Windsor here, as we can’t blame Russell as well. The young Brit obviously would like to showcase his talent and compete with his teammate and try to beat him. Whereas Hamilton’s goal is to not fight with his teammate but to fight for the eighth title. The collective goal is different at Mercedes, which is exactly what is hampering Hamilton’s desire to win the elusive eighth.

Editorial Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EssentiallySports.