George Russell has revealed the physical scars from his last-minute Mercedes Formula 1 call-up at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.
Russell was dropped into the cockpit of the W11, just one season into his F1 debut with Williams, to replace Lewis Hamilton at Sakhir in 2020.
The Briton was a Mercedes junior, and despite finishing point-less in his rookie season with the Grove-based team, he was earmarked for the eventual race seat he got in 2022.
That said, the incumbent COVID-19 pandemic fast-tracked Russell into making his debut for the German marque, but the excitement did not last long.
The last-minute nature of Russell’s call-up meant he had to fit himself into the cockpit and race seat designed for Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas – two drivers whose physical stature was much smaller than that of the Briton.
“I got the phone call on the Tuesday. I jumped in the car on Wednesday to see if I fit, and I did not,” he recalled on the SAP Significant Figures show.
“It was Lewis and Valtteri Bottas who were the two drivers at the time. They are quite a bit shorter than me.
“I’ve also got quite big flipper feet as well, which is quite tight in a Formula 1 car. And I was scrunched in, bent over, my shoes didn’t fit. I’m a size 45, like 11.5, 11. And I had to wear size 43 shoes to fit in.”
But Russell wasn’t going to let his big chance just go. “They were asking me, ‘Is it OK?’,” he added.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, totally fine. No issues, no issues. I’m driving, no matter what, I am driving this weekend.”
Running the entire race weekend squeezed into that cockpit had left physical scars on Russell that he sports even today.
“I’ve still got the scars on my hips,” he revealed.
George Russell reflects on “tough” Mercedes F1 debut
Russell hit the ground running with the W11, slotting himself onto the second-row of the grid after a Q3 lap that was only 0.026s shy of pole-sitter Bottas’ time.
On race day, Russell barged his way into the lead and looked on course for a sensational maiden win.
That said, the racing gods had other plans for the Mercedes debutant. Russell picked up a puncture in the dying embers of the race, forcing him to pit from the lead – eventually rejoining the race in 14th.
But he pushed on, getting himself into ninth at the chequered flag and taking home his first F1 World Championship points.
“This was my first shot,” Russell explained. “I mean, I hadn’t even scored a point until this point in my whole career because the team, as I said, we were so slow at Williams.
“I was on course to win the race and then it all got taken away. It was really tough, but I also knew what I showed in that race was enough that that would probably seal my future with this team.
“I knew my time would come. I sit here now, six years later, if I’d won that race or the race panned out the way it did, it hasn’t changed my life.
“You know, maybe if my career finished the year after because of an injury or something, and I never won a Formula 1 race, that would really affect me for the rest of my life.”
Despite this heartbreak, Russell’s Sakhir brilliance was enough to convince Toto Wolff to hand him a full-time race seat in 2022, just as F1 transitioned into the ground-effect era.
He would go on to win his maiden F1 race at Sao Paulo later that season.
READ MORE – Mercedes delivers bleak prediction for ‘inevitable’ F1 penalties
Discussion about this post