16 January 2023 , 20:31
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George Russell says Lewis Hamilton taught him more in their first season together at Mercedes than he learned during his entire three-year stint with Williams.
Not only did Russell acquit himself well up against Hamilton last year, but he beat his team-mate by 35 points. He also secured Mercedes' only victory of the year in Brazil, as the seven-time world champion endured his first ever winless Formula 1 season.
Still, the 24-year-old knows he is very much the junior racer when it comes to experience at the top level. And he has heaped praise on Hamilton for the time he has taken to help guide his fellow Brit.
"It has been good," Russell told GPFans of the relationship between them. "I've always had a huge amount of respect for him, but equally, he's always shown me the respect and given me the time.
"It helped that when I was in Formula 2, I'd often fly with Lewis from some of the races and spend time with him in the engineering office, so we naturally had a good relationship, anyway.
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"Seeing how he works with the team has been a really good opportunity for me to learn from someone who has more experience than anyone – except Fernando [Alonso] – on this grid.
Russell spent his first three years in F1 leading the Williams team despite being inexperienced himself (PA)"You can't buy experience, so having that chance to be in the garage next to him and sit opposite him in the engineer's office is probably helping me gain a few years of experience. It is maybe making up for my three years where I was trying to lead the team at Williams when I actually had very little experience in that regard."
As Mercedes struggled with their car, Hamilton and Russell worked together to squeeze every point they could out of it over the course of the season. That meant there was little room for an intra-team rivalry, though Hamilton has already admitted that things between them could chance if they are both in the title fight this year.
"If he finishes ahead of me in the world championship this year, I won't mind. We're going for fifth and sixth places," the seven-time champion said last October. "It would be a different story if it was a matter of first and second place."