Russell says 'there was sort of no way out' of Williams

George Russell reckons that he spent too long driving for Williams before finally making the jump to Mercedes at the start of the 2022 season.

Russell made his debut with Williams in Australia at the start of 2029 and stayed for three years, completing a total of 59 race starts for the team plus one outing for Mercedes standing in for an unwell Lewis Hamilton at Sakhir.

But the 24-year-old Briton from King's Lynn in Norfolk admitted that he would have left Williams sooner if he could - but that the contracts tied him down for the full duration.

• Read also: Russell urges FIA to stick to one F1 race director

Russell signed up with the squad after winning the 2018 Formula 2 championship, only to find Williams a shadow of its former self and in increasing financial difficulties affecting its on-track performance.

It meant that Russell was left struggling in vain to get into the points. Although he finished in ninth place in his 2020 Mercedes run, his first points for Williams didn't come until the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.

The following race saw him take second place in one of the oddest Grand Prixs on record when torrential rain meant the Belgian GP was reduced to a single lap behind the safety car.

Russell told this week's Beyond The Grid podcast that he had very different expectations when he originally joined the team.

"When we signed with Williams back in 2018, this was a team, bearing in mind that had just spent three years scoring podiums finishing P3, P3, P5 in the constructors’ [championship].

"Then they had a very bad year in 2018 where they finished last," he continued. "But we thought that this was a team that at the time that can bounce back from this, and they’ll be back in the P5 to P3 region of competitiveness.

"So we all sort of agreed that three years was a good period, fighting for points, maybe for podiums.

“In hindsight three years driving on my own at the back of the grid was too long. But unfortunately Claire did quite a good job at the contract negotiations and there was sort of no way out.”

Then-deputy team principal Claire Williams rebuffed Mercedes' approaches to release their protege, and it wasn't until Williams was sold that Russell was free to join the world championship squad the end of 2021.

Russell's long-overdue arrival at Brackley alongside Lewis Hamilton in place of Valtteri Bottas coincided with a slump in form for the Silver Arrows in the wake of new regulations which introduced the issue of 'porpoising'.

But while Hamilton has struggled with the changes, Russell has been a model of consistency and been in the top five in every race he's finished this year - the exception being his DNF at Silverstone after being knocked out at the start.

It's left Russell thinking that the timing of his move wasn't so bad after all.

"When I look at this with the benefit of hindsight, I think joining Mercedes last year or even in 2020 would’ve been incredibly tough," he suggested.

"Going up against Lewis when that car has been evolved to suit his style of driving over so many years, that was his baby as such," he said. “Now it’s a fresh sheet of paper for everybody, everybody is starting from scratch.

"This was probably the right time," he added.

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