George Russell pulls back the curtain on his relationship with Lewis Hamilton after Mercedes partnership ended

George Russell revealed that his relationship with Lewis Hamilton had continued to get even better since the partnership at Mercedes ended in 2024. The British duo were part of the German squad from 2022 to 2024 and ended up having a more or less amicable collaboration.

Russell stepped into Mercedes in 2022 as a young driver teaming up with Hamilton. The driver did not exhibit any kind of nerves at the time but showed a great deal of maturity. 2022 was the year when the German team took a step back from being the benchmark in F1.

For Russell, however, it was an opportunity to race at the front, and he took it with both hands. In 2022, he beat Hamilton in the championship, the driver's first loss to a teammate since 2016. In 2023, Hamilton would retaliate and outscore his young teammate, bringing things back to the same level.

This was followed by a 2024 F1 season where Lewis Hamilton announced at the start that he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari. George Russell took a step that season and would convincingly beat his veteran teammate once again, capping off the partnership.

Since then, Hamilton has moved on to Ferrari, while Russell leads Mercedes. According to the lead driver at the German team, the end of the partnership has had a more positive effect than expected, as the two are now closer than before. He told Motorsport Total:

“No — if anything, it’s actually become a bit closer. We sometimes fly together and talk to each other more often off the track. Lewis is someone whose company I really enjoy. Of course, he’s extremely in the limelight, more than any of us — and sometimes a protective shield goes up.

But in an intimate setting, he’s someone I get on really well with. It’s nice to have someone like him, someone I can ask for advice from time to time, because he’s at a completely different stage in his career.”

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George Russell on getting the better of Lewis Hamilton as teammates

In the three years that the duo were together, George Russell got the better of Lewis Hamilton twice over a season and, in essence, beat him during their time as teammates. Russell, however, doesn't want to go too much into it and leaves the judgments to everyone else involved (via PlanetF1):

“I’ll leave that to your judgement. I just ride, week in, week out. I’ve always said that I’m not afraid to be anyone’s teammate. At the end of 2021, Lewis was the hottest property in the field. Nobody would have thought that anyone at Mercedes could beat him as a teammate. I came in and performed from the first race. I always believed in myself.

The reputation he had is the same as Max has now. Nobody believes that Max is beatable. And people thought the same about Lewis back then. People forget that Lewis came into Formula 1 as a rookie and finished on the podium every time in his first [nine] races, with a two-time world champion as his teammate. That says a lot.”

Russell is now the team leader at Mercedes after Hamilton's departure. On the other hand, the seven-time F1 champion has moved on to a new challenge at Ferrari, where he's facing another young driver in Charles Leclerc.