Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
He's long been tipped as a Formula 1 champion in waiting and he's not afraid to tangle with Max Verstappen on and off track. Big rule changes mean this might be George Russell's year.
Mercedes showed good pace in preseason, with Russell and teammate Kimi Antonelli consistently among the fastest drivers, and racked up the most miles across the three tests.
Still, Russell says slow starts are the hurdle the team is "stumbling" over.
He won two races last year and was fourth in the standings, best of the rest behind the title contenders from McLaren and Red Bull. Victory in Singapore was a sign of growing maturity after he crashed on the last lap there two years before.
Russell will have to overcome lingering concerns over Mercedes' reliability and some sluggish starts in testing, but with increasingly confident 19-year-old teammate Antonelli in support, the British driver could be a genuine title contender for the first time.
It's already going better than Russell's first full season at Mercedes.
After F1's last big regulation change, he and teammate Lewis Hamilton were handed a radical-looking 2022 car that did away entirely with sidepods.
It looked fast but preseason testing showed the team had made a blunder. The car was slow and made Russell feel he was being "shaken to pieces."
Mercedes was strong in preseason this year but he has one big reservation about whether his car can lead the pack in 2026. The complex start procedure could be the team's Achilles heel.
While ex-teammate Hamilton and Ferrari have turned heads with their speed off the line in practice starts, "I think the two starts I've made were worse than my worst-ever start in Formula 1", Russell said last month.
"At this stage I don't think it matters how quick you are," he said. "The thing that's going to trip you up is going to be that tallest hurdle, and that's what we're trying to get our heads around right now and we're stumbling on some at the moment."
There's also uncertainty over a rule change from June which could affect Mercedes' engine, which the team says is legal.
Russell was a star of the future before he arrived in F1. He beat Lando Norris to the Formula 2 title in 2018, impressed in F1 with an uncompetitive Williams and nearly won his first race with Mercedes in 2020, but for a pit error and puncture.
The big surprise of recent years has arguably not been his race-winning drives, but how he's emerged as a leader among F1 drivers and a shrewd player of politics in the paddock.
Besides locking horns with the FIA in his role as director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, Russell went public last season with a claim Mercedes was talking with Red Bull's Verstappen while his own contract renewal talks dragged on.
Russell and Antonelli eventually renewed in October.
In the latest series of Netflix documentary "Drive To Survive," released last week, Russell muses whether Verstappen's hints at a move away from Red Bull were an attempt by the Dutch star and his father to unseat then-team boss Christian Horner.
"I just wonder if this is all a bit of a play and a stir," Russell said. "Trying to put pressure on Red Bull that they'll only continue with Red Bull if Christian's gone."
Horner, who was removed from his post in July, has said h e doesn't blame the Verstappens.
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