How George Russell reset mentally to face Lewis Hamilton as Mercedes team-mate

George Russell has opened up about how he dealt with moving to Mercedes to become the team-mate of seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton.

The British driver signed to drive for Mercedes in 2022 after a three-year stint with Williams.

"It was a huge day because it felt like climbing the ladder. This didn’t feel like one step up. It felt like I took three steps in one go," the Mercedes driver explained on the Untapped podcast. "And over those coming months before I started the season with Mercedes, I was thinking like, I believe in myself. I believe I can beat anybody. But the truth is, you don’t know until you go up against the best ever.

"And I’m stepping into his team where he’s been for 10 years. Everything’s built around him. I’m coming in. I feel fast. I feel young. I feel healthy and ready to take the fight. But you just don’t know.

"So, I was thinking about how I’m going to deal with this psychologically until one day I had a really good conversation with my psychologist about it - like how I should deal with the pressure of being his team-mate, and concluded that when I walk into the garage, I’m jumping into my race car. I’m putting my helmet on. I’m putting my visor down.

"It should not matter if my team-mate on the garage next door is a seven-time world champion or if he’s a rookie or if there’s nobody there, because I’m in control of my own destiny. And that’s the approach that I had. This is on me to perform."

The 27-year-old added that he had to shift his expectations when comparing his performance to Hamilton's.

George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes

Photo by: Erik Junius

"And finally, taking acceptance that if I were to finish ahead of Lewis in a season - I think my stats against previous team-mates were [that] I finished ahead of them 95% of the time - I concluded, well, if I beat Lewis in a season, that’s going to be an amazing achievement. But I’m not going to beat him 95% of the time.

"So, if I beat him 55% of the time over a year, that’s amazing. But you’ve got to accept 45% of the time, you’re going to be behind him. And that’s totally understandable because you cannot go up against the GOAT and expect to wipe the floor with him.

"So that was probably the biggest psychological shift I had:  accepting that my goal is to beat him over a season, but there will be times that I will be behind him."

Russell has since stepped into the role of the lead driver at the Brackley outfit after Hamilton moved to Ferrari in 2025. He sits fourth in the drivers' standings with 172 points and won his fourth career grand prix in Canada.