Can George Russell challenge for the world championship next season if Mercedes provides him with a fully competitive car? Given the form he has shown in 2022 with the difficult W13, the answer has to be yes – but to achieve his goal he’ll have to beat team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the same machinery.
Following a three-year apprenticeship with Williams, Russell, 24, was promoted to the big time with Mercedes in 2022, and he fully expected to have a car with which he could score race victories. After all he’d already had a taste of the top when he replaced the Covid-struck Hamilton at the 2020 Sakhir GP – arace he could have won, had fortune gone his way.
Instead he faced a very different kind of season as his team struggled to fight its way out of the hole it found itself in at the start of the year with severe porpoising and ride issues.
It’s all relative, of course. A bad Mercedes is still better than most other cars on the grid, and Russell was able to grasp the opportunity to prove beyond all doubt that he deserves his place in the front rank with an impeccable drive to win the penultimate race of the season in Brazil.
With one race to go in Abu Dhabi it ensured Mercedes takes away at least one winner’s trophy from an otherwise barren 2022 campaign. But, perhaps more importantly, it has given the team the belief that it is on
