Russell 'would be happy with Hulkenberg' at Williams

George Russell says he would be happy to see Nico Hulkenberg join Williams as his team mate in 2020.

Robert Kubica has already announced that he is leaving Williams at the end of the season, with a possible move to Haas as a test and development driver believed ot be on the cards

That opens up a possible race seat at Williams for Hulkenberg who has been let go by Renault, although current Formula 2 driver Nicholas Latifi is still believed to be favourite to take the spot.

"My preference is to have the fastest driver possible next to me," Russell told Motorsport.com this week ahead of the 2019 Russian Grand Prix.

• F1i Picture of the Day: Russell and Grosjean clear the air at 30,000 feet!

"I'm doing my best to prove what I can do to everybody, and I want the opportunity again to show that," he explained.

However he admitted that the choice of who will be alongside him at Grove next year is above his pay grade. "Ultimately from my side I focus on myself, my own job, my engineers," he acknowledged.

The big choice for deputy team principal Claire Williams is whether to go for an established driver like Hulkenberg who can bring experience to the team, or else sign up another fast, raw talent such as Latifi .

"There's one argument in favour of bringing an experienced driver in, in order to help lead the team and guide the team," Williams commented. "But equally there's no reason to say that a younger driver couldn't do that as well.

"George is a perfect example with the work that he's done for us this year. It's his first year in F1, he's been able to help lead the team in an extraordinary way.

"He comes to the track, puts a smile on his face, and he leads the team," she added. "He knows and understands that responsibility outside the cockpit, as he does the responsibility inside the cockpit.

For his own part, Russell said he had no preference as to which direction the team went in choosing his 2020 team mate.

"I feel ready to take control, lead the team if it was to be a rookie to come alongside me," he insisted.

"But equally I'd probably be just as happy to have an experienced guy such as Hulkenberg coming in, with a good reputation and experience.

"I'm sure I can learn some things from him," he suggested. "But again, it gives me a very good opportunity to show what I can do."

Russell did suggest that he would like to partner Lewis Hamilton in the future, calling him "the most complete driver that I've ever come across."

At the moment, Russell is currently the only driver on the grid not to have scored a championship point in 2019. His team mate Kubica broke his own duck in Germany, and the point was confirmed this week after an appeal by Alfa Romeo against the result was thrown out bu the FIA.

And last time out, Russell became the team's first retiree of the 2019 season after he was driven into the wall by Haas' Romain Grosjean during the Singapore Grand Prix.

Russell said there were "no hard feelings" with Grosjean about the incident, after which the stewards decided not to take any further action against either driver.

“Romain is a great guy off the track, we get along,” Russell said on Thursday. “I disagree with what happened on track, but that’s life. We’re both grown men and we can move on from that.

“We spoke on Sunday night, afterwards we texted each other to say what happened on track, stays on track, no hard feelings off it."

“We are all good," confirmed Grosjean. "George is a great guy, we talked about it. We went to the stewards, we saw all the footage.

"Mika Salo was the driver steward and said 'If I was George I would have done the same, if I was Romain I would have done the same’."

“It’s a bit of a shame it ended up that way but we’re all good. We played a bit with social media, it was fun.”

Since then the pair have even shared a private flight to Sochi, along with Racing Point driver Sergio Perez and McLaren's Carlos Sainz.

"We joked about [the crash] and Carlos and Sergio joked about it on the plane, too.”

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