What Is Lewis Hamilton’s Honest Opinion of His Future Mercedes F1 Teammate George Russell?

British driver George Russell has joined 8x constructors’ champion Mercedes ahead of the 2022 F1 season. Though relatively young, Russell is one of the most sought-after drivers on the current F1 grid. He dominated the 2018 GP2 championship with Lando Norris as his direct competition. After three years in the sport, his class as a driver is hard to ignore, be it the 2020 Sakhir GP in Mercedes W-11 of Lewis Hamilton or a P2 finish in a wet qualifying session in Spa 2021 for Williams.

The partnership of a young gun and a legend is inviting a lot of speculations even before the season has started. Many believe this duo will be untenable because it has turned out to be a recipe for disaster several times before in sports history. Russell is still battling for his 1st F1 win, let alone a championship. Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton is statistically the greatest ever in the sport. So it’s definitely not going to be a meager task for Russell to challenge the fellow Briton, but many believe it will happen.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff recently downplayed the possibility of an internal clash in the Mercedes team. He said that the ‘measure’ of Lewis Hamilton is “often wrongly questioned”. Wolff claimed that the Mercedes luminary just wants fair competition on the grid. Hamilton has been in fierce rivalries with his teammates in the past, most notably Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso. But what does he think of George Russell?

Lewis Hamilton wants teammate George Russell to be a World Champion

After the Abu Dhabi controversy, Hamilton’s return to F1 is also under question. Meanwhile, Russell, 23, with immense talent and grit, is the future of Formula 1. Hamilton has been out of the social media glare since the season finale, but he spoke some very motivating words for Russell when the title fight was still on.

While talking to BBC, Hamilton said that he wants George Russell to be the next F1 champion from Britain.

“You’ve seen George is hugely respectful,” Hamilton told the BBC. “He’s a super-talented young man and I think there’s a huge amount of respect already going in and we have a nice balance at the moment.”

“But he’ll want to be quick, he’ll want to show up and win and do all those things you do when you enter a new role. I really want to see him succeed. There will be a point when I don’t continue in this sport and, you know, he’s my teammate, and he’s gonna be the next Brit I want to see win a World Championship, “So while we’ll be competing and I want to win on the track, I really hope I can have a positive influence on how he conducts himself within the team—whether it’s the time he commits to engineering or how he churns through the data or even just how he drives on the track,” he added.

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Mercedes will launch their 2022 F1 car on February 18th ahead of the winter testing in Barcelona on 23th of the same month. Fans are eagerly waiting for any concrete update on the return of Lewis Hamilton, with little success till now.