Russell and Hamilton are set to embark on their second season as Mercedes team-mates within the 2023 marketing campaign, which can observe the troublesome 2022 season the place Mercedes’ W13 challenger was initially badly off the tempo and impacted severely by porpoising.
Though Hamilton was recognized to want Mercedes presumably maintaining Valtteri Bottas throughout the storage moderately than selling Russell for 2022, the pair’s new working relationship didn’t come below pressure as they labored with their Silver Arrows squad to enhance the W13.
Mercedes hopes this work will result in a fast return to the entrance of the F1 grid and whether it is profitable there will probably be extra give attention to how its drivers get on given the elevated stress of title chasing and since the group has generally struggled – most notably when Nico Rosberg was Hamilton’s team-mate in 2013-2016 – to maintain a driver pairing simple.
When requested if he felt his relationship with Hamilton would stay wholesome within the circumstances Mercedes hopes to seek out itself in throughout an interview in late-2022 with choose media together with Motorsport.com, Russell replied: “I imply naturally in case you are preventing for 1-2s there will probably be a barely totally different dynamic and that’s solely pure.
“However I feel the factor we have now going for us is the truth that we’re at very totally different phases of our profession.
“It seems like we’re on this collectively, actually.
“If we get to subsequent [season] and we’ve bought a automobile that’s able to 1-2 finishes, we can have an enormous quantity of pleasure in pondering we have now contributed collectively in serving to the group obtain this.
“After which we go about our enterprise. However we’ve bought no purpose to have battle. We now have bought a very good relationship.
“We have to give one another respect, and I feel we gave one another respect [in Mexico at the first corners] for instance.
“We recognise the significance of that inside the entire group. If our relationship begins to interrupt up, it’s going to have an effect on the group and finally it’s going to go full circle and have an effect on us as nicely.
“I feel we will proceed to construct off this and if something our relationship will in all probability get nearer as time goes on.”
George Russell, Mercedes W13, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photograph by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Throughout the early a part of the 2022 season, Russell’s outcomes had been extra constant than Hamilton’s as they tried totally different set-up approaches to try to work across the W13’s early points.
Whereas Hamilton tried excessive set-up choices throughout this time, Russell stated he didn’t as he “was in a happier place with the automobile from the start”, which Mercedes group insiders put right down to his earlier expertise racing within the pack with Williams.
“We purchased plenty of take a look at gadgets to each single monitor,” Russell added of this time.
“They had been the primary improvement components, they usually had been all the time being alternated – one week was Lewis and one week as me – week in week out.
“For certain, at first of the yr, Lewis made extra drastic set-up adjustments, throughout the confines of the automobile, however that was purely as a result of I used to be in a happier place and he was nonetheless looking for the set-up that form of suited him.
“However when it got here to the event, it might all the time alternate from one week to the subsequent.
“Every time there was a improvement merchandise, it does disrupt your race weekend, that’s why it’s all the time honest and that’s why the group all the time does one week with Lewis, one week it’s me.”
