The Williams throwback leading its path to revival

Williams likes to keep its past tidily separated from its present. Past glories - plus a few historic mis-steps - live in the Conference Centre, a short walk from the bustling hive of industry that is the Formula 1 facility. Once a factory itself, home to the touring car and sportscar programmes of the late 1990s, it now serves as a peaceful repose for engineering marvels, including a Le Mans 24 Hours winner as well as several championship-winning F1 cars.

The exhibit George Russell makes a beeline for, though, contains a spread of close-but-no-cigar machinery from the early 2000s, a period of hairy-chested V10-powered ground-pounders tamed only occasionally by traction control. Guided by Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher, the Williams-BMWs of the day came up short against the might of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari. While the racing was one-sided, several lap records still stand from 2004, the peak of the screaming V10 era. 
Like most drivers of his age, Russell regards Michael as indubitably the greatest of all time, but he cites Montoya among his favourites - so much so that when the current crop of drivers was invited to adopt special helmet designs to mark F1's 1000th world championship grand prix last year, Russell chose a design that was half his, half Montoya's.

And there's no problem with posing by one of Montoya's old cars for pictures, despite the BMW roundel on the nose. George may be Mercedes-affiliated but this Williams gig is his gig. He earned the seat not just through on-track performance - becoming Formula 2 champion in 2018 - but also by pushing every other button he could to secure it, even sending the team bigwigs a PowerPoint presentation to sell himself. That's perhaps a less bravura way of announcing himself to a team that traditionally favours shut-up-and-drive characters (Montoya, for instance, caught the eye of Sir Frank Williams by overtaking several rivals on the grass in an F3000 race at Hockenheim), but it's entirely appropriate for a driver who blends a cerebral approach off the track with a relentless, controlled aggression on it.

You could be forgiven for missing this, though, because he spent his rookie season toiling at the back of the grid in the undercooked FW42, without a single point to show for his efforts.
 It was a bruising F1 baptism and George spent the winter taking stock.

"I've had a good amount of time off," he says. "And it's probably the first time I've wanted or needed some time off. When you're in Formula 2 or GP3 and you're doing 12 races a year you just want to keep going. But when you get to F1 and it's over 20 races a year, and you've got all the marketing commitments that go with it, and you've got to stay fit for the duration, you get to the end and feel a bit puffed out.

"Plus, I had an additional ten days in Abu Dhabi after the season doing tests, so by the end of that I thought that I ought to have at least a couple of weeks off - and I spent it at home with my family! I didn't fancy getting on another plane or going to another hotel. My holiday was staying at home..."

Time away from the F1 milieu has enabled him to reflect, review and identify a new perspective on the events of the past 12 months - vital in his new role as de facto team leader, given that new team-mate Nicholas Latifi has but a handful of F1 test days and practice sessions to speak of. It will be Russell who bears the brunt of responsibility for getting the most out of the car over a race weekend; we're speaking ahead of testing, before the FW43 has turned a wheel, but whether or not it represents a significant improvement over its predecessor, maximising its potential will be vital for Russell's career development.

"You can get in such a rhythm during the season that you sometimes miss some bits and bobs," he says. "Coming back into the factory at the start of this year I was really seeing how we as a team could have improved. Last year was really great for me, in a sense, because I could go out and try a lot of things. There wasn't a huge amount of pressure from my side. It was a bizarre situation to be at the back, fighting for nothing week in, week out, but I took that situation and turned it into a positive. I could take the time to develop as a driver.

"Having spent two and a half years watching Lewis [Hamilton] from within [the Mercedes organisation] I knew I had to improve to get to that level. I was constantly challenging myself, finding ways to become a faster driver. Understanding how to get the most out of the tyres, the car, the setup, all the steering wheel settings. There's so many things you can adjust during the lap - diff settings, brake calibration, brake balance, engine braking - and you have to work out how you want it mapped, how you want to use it, and Lewis excels in these areas. Firstly, he's an amazing driver. Secondly, he's understood how to get the most out of the car, making the most of all these tools - and using it to his advantage."

"It was a bizarre situation to be at the back, fighting for nothing week in, week out, but I took that situation and turned it into a positive. I could take the time to develop as a driver"

Another consequence of being the team's senior driver is that Russell now must be the most responsible hands-on voice in terms of directing development, a role that requires an element of diplomacy - or at least an understanding of when to use the carrot or the stick as motivational levers. That's not something you tend to learn on the way up the single-seater ladder when your race weekends revolve around maximising the potential of a spec chassis.

"Coming into F1 I knew the driver had a big role within the team but I never quite appreciated how much influence they have - or the weight their comments have," George explains. "From an engineering side, 700 people work at Williams and at least 300 of those are listening to every word we say and making decisions based on those comments. If you don't say things clearly, if you lead them down the wrong path, it can have a dramatic effect.

"Ultimately I'd say the car outweighs the driver's speed more - that's very clear these days - but the whole package is important because the driver has influence on the direction of development and the frame of mind everybody is in. Sometimes, when things aren't going right, it can get very intense in a debrief, and you can say one or two things in slightly the wrong tone of voice and suddenly you've pissed off 60 people. They're going to come into work on Monday thinking 'What am I doing this for?' If you say that thing slightly differently, they'll come in motivated and ready to go for it."

In this regard, Russell has also benefitted from several seasons dovetailing his junior single-seater campaigns with a test-and-development role at Mercedes, enabling him to see up close how Lewis Hamilton operates. Few current F1 drivers have understood and embraced the driver's power as figurehead and motivational guru quite like Lewis. Even when he won the world championship in Mexico two seasons ago, he devoted a portion of his press conference to describing how he was pushing the engineers to bring forward developments for the next car.

"You've seen it a lot with the greats over the years," adds Russell. "I think Michael [Schumacher] was very much a driver who really got the most out of a team. Definitely Lewis too. You can tell with some of his comments that he's passing a motivational message back to the factory and that's huge, because it doesn't matter how talented these designers are, everybody has to work together and bond and gel. And they've got to be happy and enjoy what they're doing.

"I've learned through last year. I've always tried to be as constructive as possible. Sometimes you come in frustrated and you say something snappy, and afterwards you think, 'Well, that was sort of unnecessary.' And it has a negative effect on the team. I learned to reel my emotions in a bit because there's a much bigger picture. You've got to keep everybody raring to go and giving their best. In the end, I get a faster car."

George also - tacitly - acknowledges that perhaps he was trying too hard last year to be across all aspects of his own and the team's performance. With a year of experience he's looking to dial down how much energy he expends in certain areas so he can channel it towards activities that yield greater results. There will be fewer days in the simulator, for instance - Williams now has three other young drivers on the books for that (see sidebar).

"I've changed how I prepare with the team," Russell says. "I had the philosophy last year
that I had to do as much as possible and make sure no stone was left unturned. I didn't know what to expect, or what was required of a driver in terms of time at the factory or whatever. Now I know what's required."

"Having spent two and a half years watching Lewis [Hamilton] from within [the Mercedes organisation] I knew I had to improve to get to that level. I was constantly challenging myself, finding ways to become a faster driver"

It's not a case of just doing more training. With a 22-race calendar in prospect (China's 'postponement' notwithstanding) and further expansion to come in future years, avoiding burn-out will become a key skill in a driver's toolbox. Russell says, "It's about being efficient: more isn't always better."

When it comes to physical training, maybe. But regardless of how the FW43 performs this season, we reckon there's more to come from George Russell. Better? For sure. We expect great things from a young man who already has the hallmarks of the Williams greats of yesteryear.