How Russell showed he can lead a Mercedes F1 title charge with Vegas victory

Las Vegas: a city defined by the intangible element of luck. Those that enjoy Lady Luck's kiss of fortune bask in the sodium lights of the Strip’s myriad casinos, while those unlucky souls are doomed to walk the cold, windy streets as the desert heat joins the sun in falling behind the horizon. And, as the competitive order of Formula 1's 2024 season has become increasingly comparable to a slot machine, only luck seems to have any influence over the entropy. 

Sure, you make your own luck. Max Verstappen did that earlier in the year; he'd pounced on a once-competitive Red Bull RB20 in the early season and reeled off a string of victories.

Seven wins from the opening 10 grands prix suggested that 2024 was set to be another Verstappen benefit gig, but it was how he handled the sudden turnaround in fortunes when Red Bull's development curve ran aground that clinched it. When you can't win, racking up the points and (generally speaking) avoiding the pitfalls of over-driving mitigates the efforts of the other drivers.  

As Red Bull had to contend with the consequences of its development falling the wrong way, Verstappen made sure he got the best from himself. Now, he's a four-time champion, and he's done it in a car that's no longer the best on the grid. 

For George Russell and Mercedes? If you're feeling uncharitable, you could suggest that the slot machine sometimes pays out. But one doesn’t wish to denigrate the efforts of Mercedes at all, even if the weekend came to the team unexpectedly. It’s more akin to poker; the others might have had worse hands, but Russell was not drawn into the bluff-and-double-bluff nature of the game. 

Mercedes probably knew far more than it was letting on. It's well known that the W15 struggles in hot conditions; the car seems to get more energy into its tyres, perhaps through running on the deck more than its immediate rivals, but this is susceptible to inducing thermal degradation when track temperatures start to swing beyond the 30C mark. In a low-grip environment however, such as the streets of Las Vegas, this is a desirable quality. 

When it rocked up in the first free practice session and demonstrated a clear edge over its competitors, there was perhaps a little expectation within the team that the order would normalise and Mercedes would slip back. It's been a frequent theme for the Brackley squad throughout the season; flatter to deceive on Fridays, disappoint on Saturdays and Sundays. When it followed up its practice heroics on Thursday night with strong performances in FP3, it actually looked like Mercedes might be able to make a decent fist of the weekend. 

Mercedes dominated the weekend like old times for its first win since July's Belgian GP

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Russell made the most of that. In truth, Lewis Hamilton was probably the quicker of the two over the weekend. The seven-time champion was so upset by a dismal Brazilian event that he briefly considered walking away before the end of the year, but he instead came out swinging. But he'd overstretched himself in qualifying and made a grand hash of his two attempts at a flying lap in Q3, while Russell kept it clean. “I knew if I did a clean lap it would be enough to secure a front row,” Russell mused, and thus his pragmatic flourish yielded pole. 

There were two obstacles for Russell to overcome in the opening stint: acing the start and preserving the lead beyond the opening handful of laps. The short run to Turn 1 largely took care of the first obstacle, particularly as the duo of Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly were gazumped into the first corner by a neat-starting Charles Leclerc. This upped the challenge of the second hurdle, since the early indications were that Leclerc had the whip hand.

FP2's long runs appeared to have Ferrari ahead of Mercedes. The SF-24 generally has a much more delicate touch with the suite of Pirelli tyres, a tacit effort from the team to dispel the tyre-related woes that sapped at its performance in the previous two seasons. 

The cool track surface remained at around 17C and thus negated the overheating issues that Mercedes tends to face

But that only works if the Ferrari has its tyres brought in gently. Leclerc's one-stop victory at Monza worked because he had to conserve from the off, and he let his rubber get up to temperature properly to stave off the threat of degradation over the lengthy stint on hards. This time, the Monegasque didn't do that – sensing an opportunity to take the lead in the early stages, he put Russell under heavy scrutiny at the end of lap four. 

He employed DRS along the Strip with a view to making the move work into Turn 14, but Russell sagely held the inside line knowing that the outside would have perilously low grip. For the Briton, it was about holding those key checkpoints during the brief siege.

Leclerc tried to hold the outside through the Turn 17 kink, but Russell covered that. The silver-and-black machine then rolled across the start/finish straight and once more kept the inside for the tight left-hander, which ultimately ran Leclerc out of useable road. Holding the outside line would have been like attempting to navigate an ice rink, and the Ferrari couldn't dig its skates in to keep in touch. 

This came back to bite Leclerc, whose tyres were battered and bruised by the added exertion. They couldn't sanction another attempt to push Russell any further, and instead Leclerc started to fall backwards into the clutches of team-mate Sainz. Two laps later, Sainz had taken second and Leclerc was now easy prey for Verstappen, who looked lively in the opening stint of the race on the medium tyre. 

Good tyre management was key to a successful Las Vegas GP

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Without an expected assault from the Ferraris, whose promises of a greater race pace versus their qualifying efforts never materialised, Russell had the licence in the opening laps to take a more delicate approach to his medium tyres.

“To be honest, stint one was exceptional,” he reckoned. “I knew from there on in the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tyres and opened them up. So it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.” 

At this juncture, Hamilton was still among the lower reaches of the points. Irked by his own profligacy in qualifying, he was seeking to make amends. Once clear of Haas's Nico Hulkenberg, Hamilton eventually reeled off passes on Oscar Piastri, Yuki Tsunoda, and Gasly before the opening round of stops – as the medium tyres scarcely lasted anything more than 10 laps for the cars ahead. 

In warmer temperatures, Mercedes might have suffered a similar fate, but the cool track surface remained at around 17C and thus negated the overheating issues that Mercedes tends to face. The Sainz-Leclerc-Lando Norris pack ahead were all struggling with graining; Verstappen had rounded both Ferraris by the end of the 10th lap, but soon dipped in to pit at the end of his next tour before he encountered the tyres opening up. 

Both Mercedes could hang it out for a little longer, and Russell and Hamilton used up the tyre life they’d saved before making their own stops on laps 12 and 13 respectively. This ensured that Russell preserved a nine-second lead over Verstappen when everyone had cycled out in the stops, and that Hamilton could sit on the tail of Norris – although the presence of the yet-to-stop Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas, and Franco Colapinto had initially flummoxed him. He assumed that he’d lost position to the midfielders, but quickly muscled his way through and got onto Norris’s gearbox. 

Norris, who had spent all weekend beset by front-tyre graining, was no real threat to the pace of the Mercedes. But the Ferraris ahead were harder to break down, not least because Leclerc was being pulled along with DRS from Sainz. To his credit, Sainz was also keeping a consistent vigil on Verstappen from two seconds behind the champion-to-be; the RB20 was not as dynamic on the hard tyres as it had been on the softer compound.  

The red cars and Hamilton remained in lock-step through the rest of the middle stint, as it became apparent that the expectation of a one-stop strategy was little more than mere fantasy. This was the transition point; Hamilton was in a conservative fifth place at the time he called into the pits, but Ferrari’s dawdling over pit strategy allowed Mercedes to gather the upper hand. 

Sainz’s bargaining for a pitstop was influenced by the graining problem emerging once more, but Ferrari was not wholly convinced that the Spaniard had a big enough window to clear Tsunoda and Hulkenberg – who were just over 20s further down the road. He crossed the track to follow Verstappen in at the end of lap 27, also accosted by Hamilton, but bailed out at the last moment and did another lap – giving up a place to the later-stopping Leclerc – because Ferrari was not ready for him. 

Sainz bailed out of making his second stop, which cost him a place to Hamilton

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

That this wasn’t investigated by the stewards was of some confusion, but Sainz got out of jail by not having technically entered the pitlane. Regardless, he did Hamilton a favour. The extra lap ensured that the #44 Mercedes claimed the undercut without needing to spend any longer looking at the car he’ll drive next year. 

“We just didn't execute a very good race,” Sainz reviewed. “I think we stayed out one lap too late on mediums, two laps too late on hards. And, by the time I was going to pit, we had this messy radio communication in the pit entry, which probably made me lose that lap – I was completely grained. 

“That means a lot of race time that maybe would have meant we could have ended up fighting Lewis. But yeah, it just shows that in this sport, you need to do things perfectly week in, week out. We've been doing things really well in strategy and on race management all year around. But today wasn't our day.” 

“I did my job but being nice f**** me over all the f****** time” Charles Leclerc

This gave Hamilton free reign to attack Verstappen, who sensibly did not put up much of a fight. Owing to Norris’s struggles, Verstappen already had the title in the bag and felt it was folly to compromise on completing his task, and with DRS his vulnerabilities were well known.

In attempting to save on development costs, Red Bull had never built a Monza-spec low-drag rear wing, so attempted to trim out its lowest-downforce variant as best it could. The two dips in the trailing edge helped mitigate its straightline weaknesses, but Verstappen crucially had little to defend from Hamilton with. 

Hamilton was enjoying himself, a volte-face from his Interlagos travails where he lumbered to 10th in the wet. “When you're progressing and moving forward, it's always a great feeling,” he mused wistfully, delighted at the turnaround. “It felt very much like my old days at Rye House [karting], starting at the back and coming through, so it was great.” 

As Leclerc had pitted just ahead, Hamilton and Verstappen had done their second stops at the right time to gather an easy undercut on the Monegasque – who was further incensed when Sainz defied a team order not to pass by… well, passing his team-mate. Leclerc chose not to defend, but later vented over the radio that “I did my job but being nice f**** me over all the f****** time”.  

A sensible and calculated drive gave Verstappen his fourth championship - only three drivers have more crowns than him

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The path clear, Hamilton had an 11.2s deficit to Russell with 17 laps to go. He tore into it with great gusto, sensing that victory could be on the cards. Over the next five laps, he knocked that down to 7.8s, a rate that would put any attempts to overtake – if he could get to within a second of Russell – into the final couple of laps. 

But progress started to stall. Russell was in race management mode, doing the laps he needed to ensure he had enough buffer to ward off any assaults in the final tours. He also admitted to “waiting for something to happen” behind him, and wanted to ensure that he had the tyres to deal with any late surprises lest someone smear their machinery into a wall. 

Hamilton got the gap down to 5s over the next few laps, and Russell was told to pick up the pace over the radio to ensure his team-mate's progress flatlined. It proved thus; with three laps to go, Hamilton’s charge was over.

His tyres were also starting to grain, culminating in a lock-up at Turn 7 that cost a couple of seconds to his younger team-mate ahead. If the die was not already cast, it had been thanks to that minor error; Russell chalked up the third win of his career with a 7.3s margin over Hamilton. 

While Russell’s mind was on the post-race party, Hamilton had a fleeting thought of where he’d have ended up if qualifying had been a more felicitous pursuit. “If I'd done my job yesterday, it would have been a breeze today,” he contended in the post-race interviews, but later took a more conciliatory stance. 

“It doesn't really matter, does it?” he countered. “At the end of the day, George did a great job, did everything he was supposed to do and I'm happy for him and I'm just grateful I could get back up there to support the team with a 1-2.” 

The Ferraris had long fallen out of the victory chase, but at least had the performance for a podium challenge. In that final stint, Sainz and Leclerc began to press Verstappen – who asked if he should offer some degree of defence from the rapidly approaching red blurs in his rear-view mirrors. Race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase responded in the affirmative, giving the illusion that Red Bull was still interested in contesting the constructors’ championship. 

Verstappen did not force the issue with either Sainz or Leclerc throughout the final 10 laps, and thus Sainz collected third from the Dutchman with little opposition. Leclerc took fourth a few laps later. Finishing ahead of Norris was the sole aim, and Verstappen had that covered by some margin. 

Sainz and Leclerc both eased past Verstappen in the closing laps, as the Red Bull man focused on staying clear of Norris

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

He admitted his relief that he’d secured a fourth championship on the spin, given the growing threat of McLaren and Norris through the middle period of the season. But, as Verstappen explained, Red Bull took the upper hand in that battleground by making the most of a less-performant car, while McLaren struggled to grasp every opportunity with the enormity of challenging for a drivers’ title. 

“We hit the ground running well, but then we had a lot of tough races,” said the 27-year-old. “And that is something I'm very proud of, in those tough races where we were definitely not the fastest car, we kept it together as a team. We worked very hard back at the factory as well, remained calm, most of the time.  

“And we barely made any mistakes. We really maximised or even overperformed in some places. Plus, our opposition in a few places definitely didn't grab the points that they should have. And all those things, of course, matter at the end of the day when you fight for a championship.”

If Mercedes finds itself in a title battle once again, Russell has all the attributes needed to spearhead that charge

See, you make your own luck. Verstappen made his, which is why he now joins Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost on four world titles; only Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio sit ahead of him in the pantheon of champions past.  

But Russell also made his own luck in Las Vegas. Mercedes surprised itself with its performance in Sin City, but Russell knew this provided an exercise in taking the opportunities that presented themselves. He managed those opportunities perfectly, showing Hamilton the value of those Q3 missteps and demonstrating that, in such conditions, Russell can manage a victory from the front perfectly rather than simply becoming a master of others’ misfortune.

And, if Mercedes finds itself in a title battle once again, Russell has all the attributes needed to spearhead that charge. Hamilton’s departure to Ferrari for 2025 might be a loss, but Russell has proven with his Vegas victory that he can fill that void. 

Russell showed Mercedes that he can be its team leader in the post-Hamilton era next season

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images