Russell 'elite' and a 'leader' - now he may have car to challenge for title

George Russell is exuding a quiet sense of confidence as he prepares for the start of what could be a defining year for him in Formula 1.

The Mercedes driver is neither playing down the tag of pre-season championship favourite, nor leaning into it.

It feels more like it's something that changes nothing, has no relevance to the job in hand, which is being the best he can be.

Russell has been asked about it a number of times these past few weeks leading up to the Australian Grand Prix. When he is, he addresses it briefly, sometimes tangentially, and moves on.

A comment about Mercedes having "a lot of potential", for example, was quickly followed by concerns about his car's ability to get off the line, compared with the Ferrari's rocket-ship starts, and about some reliability issues that hit his team in the pre-season testing in Bahrain.

"It does not change my approach one single bit," Russell says. "I'm working so hard with the team, everybody here has been working flat out to really maximise this new set of regulations and I'm honestly just so excited by the challenge.

"Because it is a huge challenge adapting to these new cars, how the energy management works, the re-harvesting of the batteries, getting your head around the boost system, the overtake modes, the active aero.

"There's a lot of things we need to learn very quickly, but I feel I can take advantage from that and I feel confident with myself and my team."

The Briton, who turned 28 last month, has been among the most accepting of the new rules founded in engines with a 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power. His mindset seems both positive and fully focused on what's to come.

Russell is entering his eighth F1 season, and his fifth with Mercedes, and has proved himself without any question to be one of the elite in his sport.

Three seasons with Williams from 2019-21, with team-mates of questionable quality, made it difficult to judge his absolute potential, but some stand-out qualifying performances left little real doubt.

Putting a Williams - one of the slowest cars in the field at the time - second on the grid at Spa-Francorchamps in the wet in 2021 has to stand as one of the all-time great qualifying laps, for example.

When Russell joined Mercedes in 2022, his expectation was that he would become a regular winner and championship contender immediately - the team had just become constructors' champions for a record eighth consecutive time.

But it was Russell's bad luck to join Mercedes just as they made a hash of the new regulations that were introduced in 2022. In four seasons, they never really got on top of them to have a consistently competitive car. There were mere flashes of pace, never fully understood.

Russell had to be satisfied with proving himself against his team-mate. There was at least considerable satisfaction to be gained from that, given that he spent his first three seasons at Mercedes alongside Lewis Hamilton, the most successful F1 driver of all time.

Over their three seasons together, Russell came out on top in two. He has won five races in the past four years, and last season was the only driver to win apart from the three title contenders, McLaren's Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

With Verstappen universally acknowledged as the standard to whom all others have to aspire, Russell is one of a small elite group of drivers who stand out from the rest. He's also become a leader among the driver group, through his role as one of three directors of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

"It's always nice if your driver is the favourite for the bookmakers and I think he deserves it because he's one of the best," team principal Toto Wolff says.

"He's shown us where the performance of the car is and it's been overall more than great to us. George has been in Formula 1 a long time. He's a benchmark."

For seven years now, Russell has been a driver just waiting for the right car, and this year he might have it. This year's new rules have given Mercedes a chance for a reset, and the indication so far is that they have made a much better job of it than last time around.

The feeling in the paddock leaving testing last month is that Mercedes and Ferrari were the teams in the best shape, with Red Bull and McLaren perhaps a little behind in a relatively closely matched top four that is more than a second a lap clear of everyone else.

Russell is confident enough in Mercedes' potential to say that he "thinks we've delivered a very strong car" but he's wary of the performance of Red Bull's new engine.

Even so, his sights are set high. "I do want to go head-to-head with Max," he says. "and obviously Lando had a great season last year."

As things stand, before Melbourne gives the first glimpse of a real competitive order, Russell's obvious potential rivals this year are Verstappen, Norris, Piastri and the two Ferrari drivers, Charles Leclerc and Hamilton, if the seven-time champion can rediscover the mojo he appeared to have lost last year, and to some extent in 2024.

Of Russell's 19-year-old team-mate Kimi Antonelli, who is going into his second season after an up-and-down debut in 2025, Wolff says: "I'm absolutely certain it will be a good year for him, but I don't think we should expect him to be like George all the time."

Russell is good friends with world champion Norris and Leclerc. The three came up through the junior ranks together and all believe that the intense competition they gave each other, along with Williams' Alex Albon, was an important factor in them all reaching F1, as it forced each to keep raising their own standards to keep up with the others.

But it's perhaps a fight with Verstappen that whets the appetite most.

Russell and Verstappen rub along well enough on a surface level, quite happy to chat as and when they end up in news conferences together. But the tension between them is not in doubt.

They had an almighty falling out at the end of the 2024 season, when Verstappen said he'd "lost all respect" for Russell after the Qatar Grand Prix, and accused him of being instrumental in him getting a one-place grid penalty for that race.

Russell responded by saying Verstappen "cannot deal with adversity" and that "people have been bullied by Max for years".

Equally, would Verstappen have responded as he did, if it had been another driver involved in the series of incidents which led to the red-mist moment in which the Dutchman appeared to deliberately drive into Russell's car in Spain last year?

Verstappen has admitted his reaction that day was "not good". But there seems little doubt that a title fight between these two would not be as relatively harmonious as was last year's between Norris, Piastri and Verstappen.

For now, though, that's all speculation and Russell is focusing only on what he can control, while pondering the potential threat of Ferrari and Red Bull.

"The car's feeling good," he said on the final day of pre-season testing. "The new power-units are feeling fast and we're making improvements every single day.

"The thing that's going to trip you up is going to be that tallest hurdle," he says. "And that's what we're trying to get our heads around right now. We're stumbling on some at the moment."