George Russell has stepped up to his new position as Mercedes’ team leader beside F1 rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli in 2025 following Lewis Hamilton’s defection to Ferrari.
The Brackley natives lost statistically the greatest ever Formula 1 driver to the Scuderia with Hamilton moving to Maranello this term. Yet Russell has come out of his British compatriot’s shadow to guide the Silver Arrows with his four podium finishes during the first nine rounds.
Only McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris have made more podiums than Russell so far in the 2025 F1 season with eight each. Red Bull star Max Verstappen has also reached four rostrums and he only pips Russell for third in the F1 drivers’ championship by 26 points.
Russell was also the most consistent driver on the grid during the first six rounds as the only person to finish every qualifying, F1 Sprint and Grand Prix in the top five. Mercedes failing to find a set-up for their upgrades at Imola saw Russell fall to P7 before coming P11 in Monaco.
Gwen Lagrue admits Mercedes ‘can’t’ be happy until Andrea Kimi Antonelli or George Russell win an F1 title
Antonelli also enjoyed a record-breaking start to his Formula 1 career after Mercedes picked their academy product to partner another in Russell, who started with Williams in 2019. The 18-year-old became the youngest driver to lead a Grand Prix and post a fastest lap in Japan.
Mercedes even saw Antonelli become the youngest-ever F1 polesitter for the Miami Sprint, as he beat Piastri by just 0.045s in Florida. But Mercedes driver development adviser Gwen Lagrue admits the Silver Arrows cannot be happy until Antonelli or Russell win a title in F1.
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Lagrue told GPblog: “’We can say, ‘Yeah, we have now two juniors in F1’. But that can’t be a target. The right target is to make sure one of these two, or the two of them, will be world champion with us.
“For me, the only target we can have when we’re in motorsport can’t be different in go-karts, in F4, in FRECA [or] in F3. We are doing this to win and to be world champions or to win the series. So, at the moment, it’s just a step.
“I see it as a step. OK, fine, we have two drivers here. But now, as a team, we need to win with them, and we need to be world champions with them.”
George Russell has never finished a season higher than P4 in the F1 drivers’ championship
Russell moved up from Williams to replace Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes in 2022 and has since scored three Grand Prix wins, five pole positions and 18 of the 27-year-old’s 19 podiums. He took one podium with Williams at the rain-affected one-lap Belgian Grand Prix back in 2021.
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But Russell has never finished higher in the F1 drivers’ championship for Mercedes than the fourth place he secured in 2022, when the King’s Lynn native also achieved his career-best points tally with 275. Despite winning two Grands Prix in 2024, he was sixth with 245 points.
Antonelli currently sits seventh in the F1 standings after the first nine rounds of the Italian’s rookie campaign with 48 points compared to Russell’s 111 for fourth place. Since his record-breaking start to the year, Antonelli suffered engine reliability problems in Imola and Spain.
