George Russell hit a century of Grands Prix with Mercedes in Barcelona – a journey that began as a one-off replacement for Lewis Hamilton back in 2020, and has taken him to title contention under F1’s all-new 2026 era.
Ahead of that race, which he started from pole position, the Briton joined F1.com to relive the standout moments so far – including both highs and lows – and to ponder what might come in the next chapter.
Sakhir 2020 – A surprise Mercedes debut
As touched on above, Russell’s first start for Mercedes did not come in 2022, when he secured promotion from Williams and joined Hamilton in the team’s line-up. Instead, it arrived unexpectedly in the closing stages of the Covid-impacted 2020 season, when the seven-time World Champion contracted the illness and found himself unable to compete.
It was a baptism of fire for the youngster, who had been serving his apprenticeship towards the back of the grid, and pushing to replace Valtteri Bottas as Hamilton’s team mate, but he acquitted himself remarkably well – setting the overall pace in Friday practice, coming within a whisker of beating the vastly more experienced Bottas to pole position, and then leading most of the race before pit stop dramas and a puncture scuppered his efforts.
This all happened despite Russell’s tall frame struggling to fit into the Mercedes W11 cockpit – a challenge that involved wearing shoes significantly smaller than his usual size, which he immediately clocks when he sees our gallery and we ask about the first photograph…
“Yes, I noticed! Because they’re very small shoes for me,” Russell smiles as we get stuck into the conversation. “My big flipper feet would usually be taking up more space on that photo.
“That car was built around Lewis and Valtteri, who are quite a lot shorter than me, and have smaller feet than me, so I had to wear two size smaller shoes just to fit in! A lot of pain, but it was very, very memorable.”
“If somebody’s only watched my last few races in F1, and then they were told to watch that Bahrain race, they’d think I’ve got the worst luck in the world!” Russell continues, moving on to a shot of him overtaking Bottas.
“I think this overtake was key for my future with Mercedes. Even though it wasn’t built up to be a head-to-head of Valtteri versus myself, everybody knew that I was gunning to try and take over his seat. When I saw the opportunity to make the pass on him around the outside, I took it.
“It felt awesome at the time, but it was a race where we could have comfortably been stood on the top step. We led the whole race until the Safety Car, wrong tyres, puncture… hence the emotions thereafter.”
“This was my 37th race in F1, and obviously my first with Mercedes,” continues Russell, picking up the third photo. “It was really mixed emotions, because I knew what I was capable of, I always believed in myself, and I always felt that when I had the car beneath me, I’d be able to deliver.
“I jumped in this car, was leading the whole race, could have won the race, but I think with how things panned out, it gave me the opportunity to fight through the pack, have that battle with Valtteri, and it’s what led me to this, being stood here today. All for a reason!”
Britain 2022 – Helping Zhou and the marshals
After that whirlwind Sakhir weekend, Russell settled back into life at Williams – spending a third campaign with the Grove-based outfit in 2021 and continuing to build his reputation through several points finishes, including a podium at the rain-shortened Belgian Grand Prix.
Then, with all-new technical regulations on the way for 2022, Mercedes decided that the timing was right, giving Russell the promotion he had been craving and an opportunity to show what he could do alongside Hamilton, who had just missed out on a record eighth world title.
While Mercedes were unable to maintain their title-challenging status amid F1’s ground-effect overhaul, Russell’s first home Grand Prix for the Silver Arrows highlighted why the sport is so much more than timesheets and results – via a scary first-lap collision with Alfa Romeo rival Zhou Guanyu, who flew through the gravel, over the barriers and into the catch fencing at speed, before being rescued and cleared of serious injury.
“I remember I made a really bad start,” says Russell of that Silverstone encounter, continuing the story. “I was the only driver with the hard tyre starting the race, came off the line, wheels spinning, all the drivers zooming by me…
“I hit Zhou, and the next thing he’s spinning around and cartwheeling through the gravel. It was probably the most horrifying incident I’d ever seen from the cockpit.
“I saw he was stuck behind the barriers, so it was a split… I think the racing instinct of me was like, ‘I need to carry on here’, and then I guess the human side came in. It kind of felt like life or death at that moment. I couldn’t imagine what he must have felt. I knew what I had to do.”
Sao Paulo 2022 – Winning for the first time
Later that season, as Mercedes pushed to return to the front of the pack, Russell managed to tick off two of his childhood dreams – charging to a maiden pole position in Hungary, then claiming his first Grand Prix victory in Sao Paulo, after surviving intense late-race pressure from Hamilton.
Following that breakthrough win, Russell was captured sitting below the Interlagos podium with his head in his hands, Mercedes mechanics watching on, and trying to process exactly what had just happened, prior to the emotions coming out during the podium ceremony and post-race celebrations.
“In this moment, I was thinking of my family, to be honest, because they were all back home,” he says, again taking a few seconds to relive it. “I had a video call with them probably five minutes afterwards.
“I probably didn’t realise how much it would mean to me seeing how much it meant to everybody else, if that makes sense. I always thought [about] how it’s going to make me feel, winning my first race, but seeing how emotional everybody was for me, and pleased for me, was really special.”
“This was my first year with Lewis,” Russell adds, moving over to the celebratory shot of himself and Hamilton on the pit wall. “He came off the back of the 2021 season, which was arguably one of his best.
“Seeing him for the last 12 laps in my mirrors, it was tense, but I felt confident, I felt good in myself. Bringing that home, being stood there with him… I grew up following Lewis, and watching him, so to be team mates with him, and stand on the podium [together], was a proud moment.”
Britain 2024 – Pole on home soil
After what he described as a “very strange” 2023 season, and “a huge number of missed opportunities”, 2024 brought the next round of highlights for Russell, including triumphs in Austria and Las Vegas, and an emotional home pole position at Silverstone.
Not only was Russell’s P1 result celebrated by the home crowd, but also Hamilton and Lando Norris’ laps for second and third on the grid – the trio forming the first all-British top three since the 1968 South African Grand Prix, when Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart led the way.
“Silverstone is such an amazing track,” says Russell, after laughing at the sight of himself levitating. “I remember being one, two, three with three Brits: Lewis in P2, Lando in P3, which I think was the first time almost ever – or it was 60 years or something, the last time that happened.
“Home race, all my family were there – that was very special.”
Singapore 2023/25 – From crashing to winning
In that aforementioned 2023 campaign, Russell suffered the heartache of a final-lap crash while fighting for the win at the Singapore Grand Prix – his frustration clear to see and hear as he threw his steering wheel out of the cockpit and let out a scream over the team radio.
Two years later, though, he would get his revenge on Marina Bay’s streets, beating Red Bull rival Max Verstappen to pole position and victory, while silencing some of the doubters who had made their voices heard at the ‘23 event.
“Singapore is brutal, because it’s so hot, so humid,” Russell emphasises, as we begin a compare and contrast sequence of photos. “At the 2023 race, we went onto an off-set strategy, and it was a chance of victory.
“It was so much focus, an hour and 40 minutes, overheating, my mind just focused on that goal. I remember I got to the last lap, I knew the chance of victory was over, and I kind of let my guard down for a second.
“I went into the left-hander, and Lando was ahead of me. I just saw him nibble the wall with the rear-right tyre, and because you’re on a street track, you’re kind of following those wheel tracks of the car in front. He clipped the wall, then I got there and hit the wall, [and went] straight into the barriers.
“My heart sank in that moment, because I couldn’t believe all that effort I’d put in. It was basically a guaranteed podium, trying to fight for the victory, and it was gone in the blink of an eye.”
“It was incredible,” Russell says of the 2025 redemption that followed – the lows and then the highs flashing through his eyes as he scans the images.
“I remember watching the pole lap back, and I was really curious to see how close I’d get to that wall, where I crashed a few years earlier. I was really conscious of taking that out of my mind, and I was millimetres away from the wall, so that gave me a lot of pride knowing that it didn’t play on my mind too much.
“It felt so amazing – such a long race, being on the podium with Max and Lando, just totally destroyed!”
“Something people might not know from this photo is that in Singapore, you drive up onto a little platform where the car goes,” he points out.
“From my previous wins and the years gone by, when you jump off the car, you know how much you’re falling. It was at this exact moment, I jumped and went, ‘Oh, s**t!’ The drop was bigger than I thought, because I was dropping beyond the platform.
“I landed, hurt my leg, hurt my ankle, but the adrenaline overcame me and carried me through it!”
Also captured at the 2025 Singapore weekend was a warm embrace between Russell and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff – the man who gave him a chance to join the squad’s junior line-up, supported his rise through the ranks and ultimately put him in a Silver Arrow.
Through the wins and the crashes, the moments of elation and pain, Russell feels his relationship with Wolff has grown stronger and stronger, including across the early stages of the 2026 season, which began with Russell taking a dominant win, before he experienced a run of misfortune and watched young team mate Kimi Antonelli bag five victories on the bounce.
“It’s been 12 years now that we’ve known one another,” says Russell, going back to the PowerPoint presentation he originally gave Wolff at Mercedes’ Brackley factory. “We’ve become so close, especially the most recent years. We’re together most days when we’re back home. Carmen [Russell’s partner] and I have such a close relationship with Susie and Toto.
“We’ve been through the highs and the lows, starting in the years when I was at Williams, trying to get into Mercedes, then four years of relative failure for us, not fighting for a championship… To arrive in Melbourne [this season], to get the 1-2 with Kimi, it was like, ‘We’re back’.
“Even though these recent races for me have been really tough, I spoke about it with Toto, just thinking about what we’ve endured these last four years, and how much we’ve fought to bring Mercedes back on top. It makes me really proud.”
“Onto the next 100!”
As Russell takes one last look at the gallery in front of him, he thinks about what could be next at a Mercedes works team he worked so hard to join, and to hit that 100-Grand Prix milestone with – the 28-year-old still very much in the mix to achieve his ultimate goal of becoming an F1 World Champion this year.
“I think the outlook is onto the next 100!” Russell smiles. “As I said, it’s been such a journey, looking at where we’ve come from. It honestly feels like yesterday.
“I remember where I got the phone call [in 2020], when Toto said Lewis had Covid and they wanted me to race, I remember the press conference afterwards, I remember standing on those barriers [at Silverstone], screaming at the guy in the truck to come out to try and lift Zhou, I remember the race start [in Sao Paulo], with Kevin Magnussen on pole…
“It’s just really, really special, and I can’t wait to make some more memories.”