George Russell opens up about his childhood “anger and anxiety”

Russell bears witness to the sheer commitment required to climb the karting and single-seater ladder towards F1

Mercedes driver George Russell has opened up about hardship in his karting career as a child, and his father’s sacrifices as he made his way to Formula 1.

Russell delved into his youth in a column for The Players’ Tribune, explaining how lonely he felt due to much older siblings having left the family home and his father working from dawn past dusk to fund his burgeoning career.

“My father worked in agriculture and ran his own business,” the Briton wrote. “He was working all day every day in order to support my racing dreams. He was gone to work before I woke up, and by the time he was back I was usually in bed. So whenever we weren’t at the track on the weekends, I was always kind of in my head wondering, ‘Where is my dad?’.

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“I have a brother, Benji, who’s 12 years older, and my sister, Cara, who’s 13 years older. So growing up, it would really just be me and my mum at home. At night, the birds would always be chirping, but they didn’t sound like nice birds you know? It sounded like a haunted house. Every so often I would be watching TV by myself, and I’d just get scared.

“Once the sun set, it got kind of eerie. If I saw a pair of headlights going by the window it was literally like, ‘What’s going on??’ One single car, and I’d be on edge. Any noise, any creak in the house, I’d think, ‘Something’s happening’.

“I was afraid of my own shadow, basically. And I probably didn’t even realise it at the time, but looking back, I was a bit of a lonely kid.”

Russell also experienced racing drivers’ typical struggles when it comes to making friends at school, which Esteban Ocon can certainly relate to.

“I didn’t have many friends at school because every weekend, when other kids had birthday parties or would go around to friends’ houses, I was at the racetrack,” the 27-year-old added. “Eventually the invites stopped coming. I knew the reason of course, but my focus was just elsewhere. It didn’t mean that I had no desire having mates, as we all do. Of course I did.

George Russell, Alex Palou, Dorian Boccolacci

Photo by: CIK/KSP

“At first, I thought I could make friends with the other drivers, but I learned early on that you can’t really be friends with your rivals. And go-karting was pretty brutal, because you were racing wheel-to-wheel, and you were banging and bashing every other corner, so you ended up having fall-outs with half of the grid. And then the parents were having fall-outs between each other, and that trickled down to the kids. So it became quite an isolated life.

“But I didn’t really think too much of school to be honest because even by that age I knew where I wanted to be. People always ask me how I felt when I was younger, missing out on all this fun stuff and sacrificing so much of my childhood. For me it was no sacrifice — it was a decision. I wanted to be on the racetrack. I wanted to be racing. I wanted to be winning.”

Many young karting drivers harbour Formula 1 hopes, but very few eventually make it, so Russell’s father Steve was extremely demanding – first of all with his manual stopwatch, due to the absence of live timing. The youngster was baffled by his poor pace in testing, given he won many races.

“It took me probably six years to realise what was happening,” he explained. “Then I finally figured it out: my dad was purposefully clicking the stopwatch late. He was adding seconds to my time. He wanted me to always think I was just a bit slower than I was.

“Even when I was winning everything, I could always push myself further. Always a little further.

“For probably 10 whole years of my career, I looked on every single lap to see where my father was standing. I was always looking for the expression on his face, looking for his satisfaction. And I don’t know… it just seemed like he was disappointed more often than he was proud. He always wanted more from me. I think he knew what it takes to be in one of those 20 [F1] seats.

“It takes... everything.”

George Russell

Photo by: CIK/KSP

The pressure to succeed eventually got to Russell, with any setback carrying a heavy weight on his juvenile mind.

“We had a little motorhome that we’d travel in to get to the races every weekend,” Russell recounted. “When I did well we were like a big happy family.

“But let’s say I was overtaken on a corner or made a little mistake, that journey home would feel like the longest ride in the world. We’d pile into the van for our six- or seven-hour drive back to Norfolk and just be sitting in silence for a really really long time. Blistering silence. Picture like a tea kettle on the stovetop.

“That was probably the hardest part. As a kid, you see and feel all that and feel like you’ve caused it.

“As soon as we got back to our house I would run up to my room. All this anger and anxiety would ball up inside me. I’d just get this itch like I had to go, you know what I mean? I had to get out of there, or I was going to spiral.”

Having won numerous karting competitions and Britain’s Formula 4 championship, Russell eventually landed a meeting with the Mercedes F1 team leaders, which secured his future in motorsport.

“In that crazy moment when my childhood dream came true, I thought of my father,” the Englishman said. “I couldn’t wait to tell him every detail.

“And I don’t know what I expected, but his reaction was surprising in a way. He didn’t hound me with all these questions… He didn’t even ask to come to the meeting. He just congratulated me, and we hugged. It almost felt like I’d been in a cage for so long, and he’d been taming me and making me who I am. Then as soon as Mercedes signed me, he kind of handed me over and let me fly.”