Can Russell think of the title as he fills Lewis Hamilton’s old role?

George Russell has had a very strong but under-the-radar start to this year’s championship; could the British driver spring a surprise this season?

While Max Verstappen’s immense performances are keeping him in the conversation for this year’s championship fight against the two McLaren drivers, George Russell’s quietly efficient start to this year’s campaign shouldn’t be overlooked either.

George Russell’s softly-softly start to the F1 2025 season

After the first five races of F1 2025, it’s clear that McLaren has the car to beat as the MCL39 has enjoyed a clear advantage at most circuits seen so far.

Verstappen’s heroics in Japan and Saudi Arabia have shown that, when tyre degradation becomes less of a factor, the RB21 isn’t far off in terms of outright pace.

But there’s almost a sense of inevitability that, unless Red Bull’s upgrades land in the same way as McLaren’s have over the past two years and correctly unlock more performance without being sidetracked by the correlation issues that continue to plague the Milton Keynes-based squad, Verstappen is facing a steep uphill challenge to keep himself in contention for the title against two drivers equipped with a marginally quicker and seemingly much more versatile car.

With Oscar Piastri leading the championship by 10 points over Lando Norris after winning three of the five Grands Prix so far, Verstappen is just 12 points off the lead – a stellar effort from the Dutch driver.

But, not much further back is a driver who has been quietly logging similarly strong results over the five rounds, without the eye-catching victory. Mercedes‘ George Russell is 14 points back from Verstappen’s tally, a total of 26 points off the lead.

F1 2025: The season’s winners and losers

👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship

👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

There to pick up the pieces of Piastri’s error in the damp conditions in Australia, Russell delivered third place at the season opener in Australia, followed up by repeating the feat in China as he followed the McLarens home and had the legs on Verstappen in outright pace.

With Red Bull and Ferrari not in the fight for the win in Bahrain, Russell brought home his best result of the year so far with second place.

Tasked with not only getting home on the soft tyres on an “audacious” 25-lap stint, Russell withstood the pressure of Norris’ late attacks and didn’t put a foot wrong in wheel-to-wheel battle as he wasn’t distracted by his W16’s transponder and DRS issues, nor by the electrical and brake-by-wire maladies that had him resetting things on the fly just to massage his car home.

Given the relative performance levels of the Mercedes and the McLaren, Russell’s refusal to relinquish position to Norris and the setbacks he was facing throughout the race in Bahrain was a performance of equal merit to Verstappen’s Japanese drive.

It was at the circuits where Red Bull’s increased performance levels, Suzuka and Jeddah, saw Mercedes lose the most ground as Russell could only manage fifth place in both rounds, with Saudi Arabia proving particularly galling as the team’s single-lap pace saw Russell in the fight for pole position, only for heavy tyre wear to compromise Mercedes’ race.

“Today we saw no land [sic] against Ferrari and Max [Verstappen] also,” said Toto Wolff afterwards.

“So that was an additional negative, that when you manage your expectations of being second quickest — and even that is not obviously what we would wish to achieve — and it panning out like it did, it just adds to the frustration of the situation.”

“This year the conditions were a bit hotter than last year, in terms of ambient and track temperature,” said Mercedes’ deputy technical director Simone Resta.

“And the cars were very, very fast in the high-speed section. Actually, there is a lot of straight line but most of the time, especially in the initial part, all the straight line is also with a bit of cornering, so the tyres never got the time really to recover thermally, from a thermal point of view and they become more critical.

“George’s pace was pushing too hard to stay with Charles and also defend with Norris and essentially, he lost the edge of the tyres and he paid the price at the end of the stint.”

George Russell stepping up to lead Mercedes team

F1 2025 is very much a defining year for Russell’s career. Having arrived at Mercedes alongside the then-undisputed team leader Lewis Hamilton in 2022, Russell fared well against him from the get-go and, in their final year together last season, underlined a clear division between them by dominating the qualifying battle – a battle that gave him the upper hand against Hamilton’s far more competitive race day outings.

With Russell now the seasoned old hand at Mercedes against the young star that is Kimi Antonelli, the British driver’s looming contract end means he simply has to perform at a level that illustrates to Toto Wolff and Mercedes he is the driver who can deliver championships once the machinery is under him if he is to continue with the team beyond this year.

After all, Mercedes – when delivering a car capable of titles – has been accustomed to having a driver capable of delivering on that potential. But, with Hamilton no longer on the scene, Russell has set about reassuring his team that he can do the same – and is doing so, with aplomb.

Russell’s star has occasionally dimmed due to high-profile mistakes in the heat of battle in the past, such as his late mistakes in Australia in 2024 or Singapore in 2023, but there’s been no sign of that rough edge so far in the opening handful of races.

Given his position of responsibility as the team leader, the driver who must lead the charge, Russell is delivering – just in time for contract negotiations with Mercedes as recent speculation linking him to Red Bull has emerged in what is a slice of very fortunate timing for Russell to remind Wolff that his driver could be in demand elsewhere.

“Certainly within the team, George is very calm. He seems very confident,” Andrew Shovlin said in Japan.

“He’s done a great job in the first two races, so that’s been really encouraging. He just seems to be very relaxed in his position in the team now and he’s just going about getting the points, trying to qualify as well as he can.

“The front row in China was very encouraging. He’s pushing us hard to improve and he’s doing a lot of work himself.

“I would say that George has stepped up into that role [of team leadership] — being the team’s most experienced driver now. We always knew he was quick, but in his own approach, he has brought a confidence and a calmness this year that’s working very well for us.”

Added to that step forward is the fact that, like Verstappen, Russell’s quiet accumulation of points and maximisation of results at this point of the season stands him in great stead for when more significant upgrades are rolled out for the W16.

Mercedes is expected to push hard on upgrades throughout the first third of the championship, before scaling back its development push as the focus switches to the revolutionary ruleset for F1 2026.

A “reasonable raft” of upgrades is expected at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.

Unlike Red Bull, which has to address some handling and balance issues as well as unlocking pace with the RB21, Mercedes has developed a compliant and fast car with no major issues to address – meaning the focus can be immediately put on unlocking more pace, rather than increasing confidence for the drivers.

It’s a marked difference to recent years, with Andrew Shovlin saying all is “calm” as “the car is what we intended it to be”.

“It hasn’t really got the vices that we’ve had in a couple of previous years and that’s down to doing good work over the winter,” he said.

“Good work last year to try and understand the problems. So far, we haven’t seen many circuits, but it’s worked well over the ones we have and through a range of conditions. So it’s good.

“There’s clearly a gap to McLaren that we need to chip away at, but that looks more like just a normal development race that we need to get stuck into rather than trying to get on top of any of the handling vices that we’ve had.”

Echoing that sentiment, Resta said after Saudi Arabia, “It has been a very good start for this car.

“The car has been competitive everywhere so far. So we expect to be competitive, fight for the podium like we have done in the initial races and try to improve from what we’ve seen in Jeddah.”

Coming off the back of what has been a quietly efficient start to the season, and the ingredients almost in place, Russell thus appears ready to challenge for his maiden title. Proving himself a capable team leader, backed up by a young and enthusiastic teammate in Kimi Antonelli, Russell has also shown he has the mettle to not be cowed in battle by the likes of Verstappen – an area that Norris, in particular, still has question marks over him.

Having seemingly finally got a handle on the ground effect regulations at the last opportunity after doing what Allison described as a “poor job” over the last three years, if Mercedes can deliver just a smidge more performance to the W16 with its upgrades, then might it be Russell who can become the biggest thorn in the side of McLaren?

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