Why Russell’s frank admission on F1 driver adrenaline addiction is to his credit

“Are there any good Formula 1 drivers?”

Stuffed full of turkey and bread sauce, and surrounded by discarded wrapping paper, not a question I was expecting to answer on Christmas Day just gone. Getting more than a handful of correct answers from University Challenge was about the limit.

The calorie-stupefied cogs had barely started turning. Explanations of Lewis Hamilton’s statistical greatness, Max Verstappen’s current crushing domination and Charles Leclerc’s searing speed rising slowly from some dormant brain place after a long season. But the question actually wasn’t the one I’d initially assumed.

“Are any of them good people?” Ahh – an entirely different query.

First, there’s subjectivity’s hurdle, I diplomatically replied – the off-season state I’d enjoyed since filing the first piece of Autosport magazine’s 2024 F1 coverage as my final 2023 task meaning I was still rather casting around for time. Then it came to me.

Hamilton’s drive for racial equality and efforts to improve diversity in motorsport was the obvious starting point. Then there was Alex Albon’s support for the Wat Sakraeo Orphanage. And Verstappen clearly dearly loves the cats that wander around his Monaco apartment.

Because ‘good’, a loaded term in itself, is always going to mean different things to different people. Although it must be stressed at this point that the criticism Hamilton gets simply for being racing driver with a worthy cause goes beyond nefarious.

Photo by: Williams

Albon visited the Wat Sakaeo orphanage near Bangkok in 2022, and auctioned his helmet to raise money for it

But, taking a step back to consider different elements of motorsport at this reflective time of year before the chaos of F1 launch season ensues, the varied qualities of each driving star will also always cause debate.

And so, another memory stirred, just as Ghosts was being followed by Call the Midwife – the interrogation long since over. It was something that Hamilton’s team-mate George Russell had said at the close of the 2023 campaign. And this was a rather frank admission.

“As I’ve grown and matured you learn what you need and what you don’t need, and where your priorities lie,” Russell said in Abu Dhabi, in an interview with select media, including Autosport.

“Even speeding on the roads. I used to speed a lot when I was younger. My parents used to live in the countryside and I was totally within my limit, but well beyond the speed limit.

"The adrenaline rush was massive, but I don’t need that because I get it 25 weekends a year. And the risk was too great. So, I think I know my boundaries" George Russell

“[Now], I just think to myself: ‘it’s just not necessary’. If I get stopped, I might lose my licence, I might lose my whatever. That stress is not worth the rush that I got from that.

“I’ve got probably the best job in the world with what I do and how stupid would it be to waste it on something like that? Or crashing my [push] bike getting a slipstream off a bus down a hill in Lanzarote to try and break 100km/h? I think that just comes with age.”

Russell had been explaining his 2023-2024 off-season plans. He’d hoped to get “Toto’s permission” to go skiing – adding that part of his case to Mercedes team boss Wolff was that “I’m always sensible when it comes to sport outside of racing, because I get my adrenaline rush from racing”.

The 25-year-old said he doesn’t “need to go down a ski slope flat out” and “even when I’m training on my bike, I put a 55 km/h limit on it”. But this hadn’t always been the case.

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Russell is content to get his adrenaline fix from racing, but admits that wasn't always the case

Russell explained how previously when he trained in the sustained heat of Lanzarote – a popular winter training location for professional cyclists too – he’d “be head down going down a massive hill [at] 80-85km/h and I just thought, ‘this is just stupid’”.

“The adrenaline rush was massive,” he continued. “But I don’t need that because I get it 25 weekends a year. And the risk was too great. So, I think I know my boundaries. There’s always going to be danger in everything. I could wrap myself in bubble wrap but fall down the stairs and break a leg.”

Russell’s adjustment wasn’t the result of witnessing Albon’s 2017 mountain bike training crash and painful collarbone breakage when they were respectively GP3 and Formula 2 racers – enjoying climbing the ladder together as friends and rivals. As he’s covered, it came from his own realisation in that years that followed that incident when he was 19 and Albon – another wise head on young shoulders – 21 that what he was doing tipped the risk-reward balance unacceptably.

Russell and Albon are sensible characters in our hot-take age. But it’s to Russell’s credit that he’s not only reached such an understanding at a youthful age, but spoken about this so openly.

Motorsport history contains many driver careers stunted or lives even tragically ended because the people in question turned to other adrenaline packed pursuits. Think Didier Pironi and powerboat racing (after his F1 career) or Ron Flockhart and flight record attempts. Plus, Manfred Winkelhock, Stefan Bellof and Robert Kubica lost promising F1 careers to Group C and rallying crashes.

These are all different circumstances to how a driver might approach road cycling as part of a strict training regime or using their talents behind the wheel of a road car. But it serves to highlight how we who appreciate motorsport can derive very different things from what we want or expect of its stars.

Plenty would want their F1 drivers to be adrenaline junkies – chucking themselves around the world and in this era sharing their exploits on social media or perhaps saving the real daring gems for a tell-all late-career autobiography. Again, it’s all subjective.

But the risk reward element just can’t be forgotten. It’s why Russell needs Wolff’s permission to going skiing in the first place. Is it worth a possible injury for what is ultimately mundane compared to securing F1 glory for Mercedes?

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Bellof was a driver whose prodigious speed knew no limits, unlike today's F1 crop

Perhaps this is why Fernando Alonso’s attempt to win the Triple Crown – particularly while he still raced (almost) full-time for McLaren in F1 in 2017-2018 – was greeted so warmly by motorsport aficionados.

Sure, it increased the risk we’d have missed his thrilling exploits in the F1 campaign just gone or his sensational defence against Hamilton to help ensure his then Alpine team-mate Esteban Ocon won the 2021 Hungarian GP. But Alonso’s mighty goal reward restored the balance.

Wherever you stand in a debate on what makes a ‘good’ F1 driver – let alone F1 drivers that are ‘good’, whatever that means – when it comes to them taking unnecessary risks away from the circuits, it’s surely always better for them to see discretion is the better part of valour.

I’d much rather see Russell’s latest attempts to succeed Hamilton as Briton’s next F1 world champion than have him possibly miss out through injury or suspension.

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

There's plenty to admire in Russell's switched-on stance and public voicing of it