George Russell has surprised everyone in its first season of Mercedesalthough he was already pointing out ways from his stage in williams. The Briton has surpassed his teammate in the final classification lewis hamiltonto which he assures that he can win.
“I still have to keep focusing on myself because I still believe that if I have the right car at my disposal, with the set-up and the tires in the right place and running the way I want it to work,I can beat Hamilton and anyone on the grid“, the young man assured in statements to ‘The Race’.
The british has achieved seven podiums and his first victory in Formula 1 this season, in Brazil: “I never doubted myself. I always believed in myself. But if you go in with the ‘I’m going to beat Hamilton 95% of the time’ mentality, you’ll end up disappointed. I’ve learned how I should act when he is extraordinarily fast”.
“That is the conviction that you have to have,” he adds. “It was quite interesting how everything seemed to flow in my direction at the beginning of the year. Then in the middle, things flowed more in his direction and they balanced“, he comments.
“But I look back and I needed that time to learn more about myself and see how I can improve. That’s why I’m so happy to have Lewis as a teammate. I feel that I am at a very strong level and he is pushing me to be even better“, he says to close.
Hamilton had no more workload to improve the car
Furthermore, the partner hamilton has ensured that both shared the work of the car equallyand that Hamilton did no more, despite the fact that the seven-time champion said yes. The Mercedes at the beginning of the season it was not going well and that forced the team to test parts to experiment and try to find the problems with the car and improve the performance.
“The set-up changes were more to do with trying to make the car quicker. We brought various things to test at each circuit, and we always alternated them. In one race they were ridden by Lewis, in the other I. I was always alternating it, week after week,” says Russell in statements collected by ‘Motorsport.com’.
“Of course, at the beginning of the year Lewis made more radical setup changes within the limits of the car, but that was only because I was in a more comfortable situation, and he was still trying to find the right set-up for his style.”
Russell insists that they both did the work: “But when it came to development, it always alternated. It’s always been like that, because we’re on a level playing field. Every time a piece of development comes along, your weekend is compromised, so that the team always does like this, a week with Lewis and another week with me“.
He points to ‘porpoising’ as one of the most serious problems: “The ‘porposing’ It was also a big problem at the beginning of the year, sometimes we had it, but other times not, or only in some corners and not in others, it was very inconsistent“.
“We discovered that the car was excessively stiff and that we couldn’t as in previous years. And then we discovered that the balance characteristics of our car were not good and they had to be readjusted“, comments Russell to close.