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MercedesGeorge Russell is a British Formula One driver racing for Mercedes. He joined the team in 2022 after three seasons with Williams and has won five Grands Prix. His 2025 season was the best of his career: two wins, nine podiums, 319 points, and fourth in the championship. He enters 2026 as one of the pre-season title favourites under a major regulation change, with his Mercedes contract vesting for 2027 only if he meets undisclosed performance benchmarks.
He is 28 years old and in his eighth Formula One season.
| Full name | George William Russell |
| Date of birth | 15 February 1998 |
| Birthplace | King's Lynn, Norfolk, England |
| Height | 182cm |
| Nationality | British |
| Current team | Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team |
| Car number | #63 |
| Father | Steve Russell, former seeds and pulses business owner |
| Partner | Carmen Montero Mundt (since 2020) |
| Lives | Monaco |
Russell was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, and grew up in Tydd St Giles, Wisbech, and Castle Rising. His father Steve ran a business selling seeds and pulses. In 2012, when George was fourteen and his junior racing career was developing, Steve sold the business to fund it. The company was subsequently acquired by Archer Daniels Midland. George attended Wisbech Grammar School and later switched to homeschooling so that he could devote more time to his racing.
He started karting at seven, following his brother Benjy, who was a competitive karter and won the 2007 Super 1 National Kart Championship in the Rotax Max category. When George began, he picked up the number from the kart his brother was renting at the time. He has used 63 ever since, through GP3, through F2, through Williams, and through Mercedes.
Their father had a particular approach to motivation. He would intentionally overstate George's lap times to make him believe he was going slower than he was, which drove him to push harder.
George went on to win multiple British karting titles, including the MSA British Cadet Championship, the British Open Championship, and the Kartmasters GP. He took the CIK-FIA European Karting Championship in both 2011 and 2012.
Russell made his single-seater debut in 2014 in the BRDC F4 Championship with Lanan Racing, winning five times and taking the title in his rookie season. He followed that with increasingly strong performances in European Formula Three, finishing third in the 2016 championship behind Lance Stroll and Maximilian Gunther, both in Prema cars that Russell later questioned the fairness of, pointing to the factory support Prema allegedly received from Mercedes and Williams that year.
Despite finishing third, Mercedes were sufficiently impressed to sign him to their junior programme at the end of the season. He had a DTM deal on the table at the time. He chose Mercedes.
Russell joined ART Grand Prix in GP3 for 2017 with Mercedes backing, winning the championship by four victories, seven podiums, and four pole positions with two races to spare. The performances earned him two F1 practice outings with Force India at Brazil and Abu Dhabi, where he impressed on both occasions.
A year later he stayed with ART for Formula 2, taking seven wins and five poles to beat Lando Norris by 86 points and claim the title. He was the fifth driver in history to win the GP2 or F2 championship in a rookie season, and the second to win GP3 and F2 in successive rookie seasons.
He was heading to Formula One. Williams, powered by Mercedes, offered him a race seat for 2019.
Williams in 2019 were the slowest car on the grid by a significant margin. Robert Kubica, a former race winner returning from injury, was Russell's teammate. Russell out-qualified him at every single one of the 21 Grands Prix that season. He scored no points. His best result was eleventh at the German Grand Prix.
In 2023, four years after the fact, Russell described that German race as the most disappointing moment of his career. His best finish was within reach; he asked to pit for slicks during a safety car period and was told no. He then ran wide and let Kubica past to score the only point Williams took all year. A future world championship contender, beaten to a single point at the back of the grid, in a race where slick tyres were the correct call.
In late November 2020, Lewis Hamilton tested positive for COVID-19 and was ruled out of the Sakhir Grand Prix. Mercedes called Russell. He drove from the back of the Williams grid to the Mercedes of his future employer in two weeks.
He qualified second at Sakhir, 0.026 seconds behind Bottas. When the lights went out he jumped Bottas into the first corner and took the lead. He managed the gap comfortably and came back through his first planned stop still in front, with the race under control.
Then, on lap 62 of 87, a safety car came out. Mercedes elected to pit both cars. A radio failure in the garage meant the call to prepare Russell's tyres did not reach the right people. Only six tyres arrived: all four of Bottas', and Russell's rear pair. The front-tyre mechanics on Russell's side never heard the message. Bottas' front tyres were bolted to Russell's car. He was sent down the pit lane in the lead of a Formula One race on another driver's tyres.
The error was spotted immediately. He was called back in on the following lap to have the correct tyres fitted. He fell to fifth. On fresh rubber he passed Bottas and two other drivers and was closing on Sergio Perez for the lead when a slow puncture forced him into a third pit stop. He finished ninth.
Russell said the win had been "taken away twice." He said the weekend had "felt too good to be true." Toto Wolff, speaking live on television, called it "a colossal f*** up." He told Russell on the team radio: "I'm sorry for that. That was a brilliant, brilliant drive."
Mercedes were fined €20,000 by the stewards.
He was two seconds from avoiding the pit stop entirely. If the safety car had appeared two seconds later, he would have already been past the entry to the pit lane.
The following season, Russell was still at Williams. At Imola he found himself alongside Bottas through a sequence of events on lap 30. He moved to overtake. He hit a wet patch, lost the car, and collected Bottas. Both retired.
Russell walked to the scene of the crash and slapped Bottas' helmet. Bottas gave him the middle finger. Russell then told the press that Bottas had been trying to kill them both. He later retracted the claim and apologised. Wolff reserved more of his criticism for Russell than for Bottas: a Mercedes junior had just taken out a Mercedes.
Two races after Imola, at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Russell drove from seventeenth to eighth and scored his first points for Williams. It was the team's first points score in over a year. After the race, Mercedes confirmed that Russell would join them for 2022, replacing Bottas.
A month later at the Belgian Grand Prix, a race run for two laps under safety car conditions before being red-flagged and declared, Russell started second. He was handed his first Formula One podium finish. It was Williams' only podium between 2017 and 2025.
Russell joined Mercedes in 2022 as the team stumbled into the ground-effect era without a competitive car. He finished fourth in the championship; Hamilton finished sixth, 35 points behind. Russell was the only Mercedes driver to win a race that season.
He took his maiden pole position at Hungary. He took his maiden race win at São Paulo, where he won both the Sprint and the Grand Prix on the same weekend. He became the first driver to win both at the same event.
He also described watching fellow F2 graduates Norris and Albon competing for points and podiums in 2019 as hard to process, having beaten them in junior formulae the year before. He had spent three seasons absorbing that particular kind of frustration. São Paulo was the answer to it.
Mercedes were winless in 2023. Russell finished fifth in the championship. The team was competitive in patches and inconsistent across the season. It was a difficult year to characterise and most profiles pass through it quickly.
In 2024 Russell won at Austria and Las Vegas. He also won at Belgium, but was disqualified; the first driver in thirty years to be DSQ'd from a race win. Drive to Survive later used the Belgian win as the dramatic moment that secured his Mercedes contract for 2025, which was inaccurate. Russell observed that he understands the show dramatises things and accepts it as a way to bring new fans to the sport, while not specifically endorsing the inaccuracy.
At Qatar in 2024, Russell took pole after Verstappen received a penalty for driving slowly on an out-lap that disrupted Russell's qualifying. Verstappen condemned Russell's appeals to the stewards. He said he had "lost all respect" for Russell. Russell responded that Verstappen had told him he would put him in the wall, which Verstappen denied. Russell finished fourth. Verstappen overtook him at turn one.
Hamilton left for Ferrari and Russell became the de facto team leader at Mercedes. The 2025 season was his best in Formula One.
He won in Canada, converting pole into a victory and also setting the fastest lap: his first career hat-trick. He won in Singapore, taking pole by 0.182 seconds on a circuit where Mercedes had not been expected to be competitive. After Verstappen struggled with used soft tyres at the start, Russell led from the front and was not threatened.
He took nine podiums in total and 319 points. He finished fourth in the drivers' championship. He described the season as the best of his career and said that Hamilton's departure had inadvertently played a significant role, elevating him to the status within the team that he needed in order to perform at that level.
Kimi Antonelli joined as his rookie teammate. Russell initially served in a mentoring capacity. After Antonelli beat him in Brazil, Antonelli said publicly that "my relationship with George is definitely changing." Russell's measured response was the kind of composure that characterises his public demeanour. The 2026 season begins with a different dynamic between them.
Russell is contracted to Mercedes until at least the end of 2026. His contract vests for 2027 only if he meets undisclosed performance benchmarks. He stopped using the 2025 racing simulator in November 2024 and spent the winter focused entirely on the new 2026 car and regulations.
Mercedes arrived at pre-season testing as early favourites under the new rules. Russell cautioned against overconfidence, pointing to Red Bull's engine as "scary." He noted that it was too early to tell which team had done the best job.
Martin Brundle said publicly that Russell was "ready" to challenge for a first world title.
He has five wins. He has never led a championship. His 2026 contract has conditions attached. He is twenty-eight years old.
Russell's driving style is notably different from Hamilton's. He brakes earlier, turns in later, and carries more speed through the exit of corners. The racing press observed during the 2024 season that this style may be better suited to the current generation of ground-effect cars than Hamilton's approach, and that Mercedes' midseason upgrades in 2024 accentuated this gap. He is described by Williams' Dave Robson as instinctive and particularly effective at controlling cars that are unstable on corner entry.
Russell has served as a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association since 2021. During the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 he joined Leclerc, Norris, and Albon to stream racing games on Twitch, becoming one of the more prominent F1 drivers in gaming-adjacent spaces during that period.
Russell and Carmen Montero Mundt have been together since 2020. They were introduced through a mutual friend over dinner in London. Mundt is from Jerez, in Andalusia, Spain, and studied business at the University of Westminster. She worked in investor relations at Ruffer LLP in London and has since built her own career while living with Russell in Monaco. She wrote on Instagram in February 2025, on their fifth anniversary: "Five years with the most wonderful person I could ever ask for."
| Year | Team | Races | Wins | Podiums | Points | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Williams | 21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 20th |
| 2020 | Williams | 17 | 0 | 0 | 3* | 18th |
| 2021 | Williams | 22 | 0 | 1 | 16 | 15th |
| 2022 | Mercedes | 22 | 1 | 8 | 275 | 4th |
| 2023 | Mercedes | 22 | 0 | 5 | 175 | 8th |
| 2024 | Mercedes | 24 | 2 | 8 | 320* | 4th |
| 2025 | Mercedes | 24 | 2 | 9 | 319 | 4th |
| 2026 | Mercedes | — | — | — | — | In progress |
*Includes points from races subject to post-race review. Career totals (end of 2025): 5 wins, 7 poles, 24 podiums.
Last updated March 2026
