'Why extraordinary George Russell outdrove Hamilton in 2022'

F1
- Last updated: March 8th 2023

George Russell vs Lewis Hamilton was the most interesting rivalry in F1 this season. Despite facing the most successful GP driver in history, Russell showed he is the real deal, writes Andrew Frankel

Lewis Hamilton pours champagne over George Russell on the 2022 French GP podium

Remko de Waaal/ANP via Getty Images

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Andrew Frankel

As soon as it became clear that Mercedes-AMG was a brilliant team with a terrible car and Ferrari precisely the reverse and that, suffering from neither affliction, Red Bull were always going to walk away with the 2022 championships, to me the most interesting contest on the grid was always going to be that between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.

We always suspected George was the real deal and knew it the moment he made Valtteri Bottas look decidedly ordinary at Sakhir in 2020, but there is no tougher challenge in motor-racing than being team-mate to a seven time world champion. Ask those who tried and failed in that role with Michael Schumacher. And it’s a problem that compounds itself: good teams find good drivers and vice-versa, and when a winning combination is found they become indivisible: the team is built around one superstar driver and the driver so immersed in the culture of the team, his relationship with his crew and the developmental direction of the car, the poor sod on the other side of the garage usually ends up feeling like they’re standing between the portcullis and the castle gate: in the team for sure, just not inside it.

Is there more to the headline stats – George P4 in the championship, Lewis P6 – than meets the eye?

Back in the days when we naturally assumed Mercedes would have a front-running car, it seemed to make sense that George would be to Lewis as was Stirling to Fangio in the same team in 1955: the loyal wingman investing a season in learning from the best in the business. I was sure there’d be times when he’d show what he was really made of, and would take maximum advantage of those unexpected situations that always pop up in racing. But surely he couldn’t mount a season-long challenge to a man most would rate in the top five of all time, and not a small number at the top of that list?

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Turns out he could. So I just thought I’d have a look over the season and see if we can figure out if there is more to the headline stats – George P4 in the championship, Lewis P6 – than meets the eye. Because on first acquaintance, it seems like a man with a prior grand total of one grand prix in a front-running car (which he’d never driven before and in which he did not fit) has put one over possibly the greatest driver in the world — not that it appears to have affected their relationship, as Russell explains in the current, January 2023 issue of Motor Sport.

Now, I know you can prove anything with statistics and I don’t claim for a moment to have done a full data analysis – I’ve not even included the sprint races because when I looked my brain started to hurt (for the record, George beat Lewis 3-0) – but I think there are some interesting conclusions to draw nonetheless.

There will of course be any number of reasons why George beat Lewis and Lewis beat George in any given qualifying or race that had nothing to do with either driver: poor strategy, mechanical failure, getting taken out by someone and plain bad luck with safety cars and the like, but over 22 races, things do tend to even out, especially as both drivers started all 22 of them and both finished 21. In the stats that follow, I’ll always put Lewis’s score first, then George’s. Don’t know why, but I think he’s earned it

George Russell ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the 2022 Brazilian GP

Russell resisted pressure from Hamilton to win in Brazil

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In qualifying it was close, only once did one driver lead the other in the head-to-head record by more than two races. Eight races in, Lewis was led by George 3-5 but ten races later, Lewis had turned it around and led 10-8. He briefly went further ahead to lead 11-8 after COTA but ended the season 12-10 up. As close a win as you can get, but a win for Lewis nonetheless.

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The story of the races themselves is a little more interesting. Lewis beat George first time out in Bahrain, then George beat Lewis five times on the trot. But five races after that, at the half-way point of the season (Austria), Lewis had clawed the deficit back to 5-6. Five races later (Italy) George was back on top 7-9 at which point Lewis turned the tables winning the next four to lead 11-9 (after Mexico). George however took the last two to make the final head-to-head tally stand as each driver having 11 victories over the other. Which seemed very fair.

What can be deduced from this? Well perhaps George’s better performance earlier in the season reflected the fact he was driving a car that was far better than what he was used to, and Lewis the reverse. Lewis got his head around that, got back on terms and even got ahead before it levelled out again. Between Canada and Mexico Lewis beat George eight times in eleven races which seems like a bit more than the luck of the draw.

But it was George who finished ahead of Lewis at the season’s end, even beating the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in a car that for most of the season had no right doing anything of the sort. So too was it George who scored Mercedes-Benz’s only victory of the season and did so fending off Lewis in a straight fight under unimaginable pressure. He had more fastest laps than Lewis (but don’t read much into that) and while he was outqualified by Lewis more often than not, his average qualifying position was actually higher, as was his average finishing position across the season. On the other hand, Lewis found himself on the podium nine times in 2022, George just eight…

Russell’s flawless performance in Brazil meant Mercedes did not suffer its first winless season in over a decade

Here, however, is the thing. Even if you squint slightly and decide that it really was honours even over the season – I’d be fascinated to read any objective account that argues Lewis edged it – what George has achieved going into a team with which Lewis won four titles in a row (which many would argue was morally five), even breasting the tape side by side is an absolutely monumental achievement for which I don’t think he has received nearly enough credit, largely down to the fact that neither Mercedes was regularly in the hunt for outright wins. Had they been contesting the championship, I’m sure George would be being lionised by now. I am sure too that the big cheeses will be forever grateful that thanks to his flawless performance in Brazil (starting the race from pole, winning it and completing the fastest lap) the team did not have to suffer its first winless season in over a decade.

So I’m going to say it: in his first year with Mercedes-AMG George Russell didn’t just outscore Lewis Hamilton, he outdrove him too. Plenty will disagree and that’s fine, for there are no right or wrong answers here. But to me at least with no axe to grind in either direction, that’s how it appears. And given who he was up against, that is extraordinary.

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