In 2015, Mercedes hired George Russell as a junior racer. George Russell was finally promoted to the senior Formula 1 squad for 2022 with Lewis Hamilton.

In order to get a spot on the young driver program, George Russell has revealed how a one-week delay in contacting Toto Wolff, head of the Mercedes Formula 1 team, was essential.

Russell joined the Mercedes  in 2015 and received assistance as he progressed through the junior F1 levels, winning the GP3 and F2 championships in 2017 and 2018, respectively, before being moved to Grand Prix racing with Williams.

Russell spent three years with the Grove-based team before Wolff decided to move Russell up to the senior Mercedes team for 2022, where he races Lewis Hamilton.

The eight-time champions had a challenging season as they struggled with the new technical regulations, finishing third in the rankings, but Russell managed to win his first Grand Prix and Mercedes’ only triumph of the year in Brazil.

When Russell thought back to when he first approached Wolff during his Formula 4 days, he explained how important the one-week time difference was.

Russell describes Wolff contact

In his interview with the High Performance Podcast, Russell said, “I thought at the age of 16, the world would come to me.

“It was only during that year I realised that they’re not looking for me and you’ve got to go and look for them. You’ve got to knock on their door.

“Toto is not going to look at British Formula 4 and see George Russell here who has won the championship by a couple of points [and say]: ‘We need to sign him.’

“But if I put myself in front of him, talk to him and show him what I am made of, maybe there’s an opportunity, so I was in Abu Dhabi doing a Formula 3 test and managed to get hold of his email.

“I thought: ‘I’ve got nothing to lose, and worst case, he doesn’t reply and I’ve lost nothing, and best case, he replies.’

“I literally just sent him an email and didn’t want to go in too hard so I just said, ‘I’m George and it would be great to meet you and talk about the future potentially.'”

Russell describes a critical email time

Russell continued, “I realise that the small things make a difference, and you need somebody on the receiving end to be in the right state of mind.

“If he’s having a bad day or he’s busy and I send that email one week earlier, which is the Tuesday before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he probably would have seen it and disregarded it.

“But [I sent it on] the Tuesday after Abu Dhabi, the season is over, he’s relaxed and has just won the championship, so here is an opportunity.

“I sent it about 9pm and he replied within 15 minutes with his PA’s copied in.

“Four weeks later, I am sat in his office, he was very nice and gave me a lot of time.

“We left the conversation saying that I’m going to race in Formula 3, and he said: ‘We’ll keep an eye on you.’

“It was at the end of 2015 when we picked up the conversation again – that’s when I signed for Mercedes.”

Before receiving his first modern F1 test at the Hungaroring in 2017, Russell worked on simulator tasks for the team during 2016.

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F1, F1 2022, FIA, Formula 1, Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, George Russell, Toto Wolff