22/08/2025 10:10
George Russell has recounted a positive conversation he had with a
psychologist as he prepared to face Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.
Russell was promoted to a seat at Mercedes in 2022 after spending
his first three seasons on the grid with Williams. The Briton was
called up to race alongside Hamilton, who had won championships in
six of the previous eight seasons. While it marked a significant
moment for Russell's career, he admitted it felt daunting to go
head-to-head against Hamilton at the time. "It was a huge day
because it felt like climbing the ladder," Russell said on the
Untapped podcast. "This didn't feel like one step up. It felt like
I took three steps in one go, "And over those coming months before
I started the season with Mercedes, I was thinking '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." As he prepared
for his first season in Mercedes colours, Russell revealed a
conversation he had with his psychologist, which placed him in a
stronger frame of mind. "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, how I should deal with
the pressure of being his team-mate. "I 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." Russell spent his rookie F1 season against Robert
Kubica, before he was joined for the following two years by
Nicholas Latifi. Having outpaced both in the intra-team battle by a
wide margin, Russell knew Hamilton would be a different level of
opponent. As a result, he adjusted his expectations. "And finally,
taking acceptance that if I were to finish ahead of Lewis in a
season," he said. "I think my stats against previous team-mates
were [that] I finished ahead of them 95% of the time. "I concluded
'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."
