‘I thought it was great’: Russell says he took Mercedes prank better than Hamilton
George Russell has always worn the junior-turned-leader narrative lightly, and his latest story from the Brackley vaults makes the point with a grin. In a new Mercedes video alongside his now-senior race engineer Marcus Dudley, Russell revisited the first time he and Lewis Hamilton shared a race weekend under the same roof — Baku 2017 — and the moment a cheeky in-house prank spiralled into a mini office takeover.
Russell was a Mercedes junior at the time, the eager reserve getting in everyone’s way, as he tells it. Hamilton, meanwhile, was in the middle of what became another title-winning campaign. Cue one enterprising engineer, Evan, who dug out an old photo of a very young Russell standing with a very pre-fashion-renaissance Hamilton, printed “like 30” copies and wallpapered the place.
“First time we met would have been… I came to Baku, 2017,” Russell said. “I guess I was like the annoying kid as the reserve driver around the office. Evan had printed off a photo of Lewis and I from when I was, like, 10 years old, and he placed it around the whole office. He printed off like 30 pieces of this.”
If you’re wondering who found it funniest, Russell doesn’t hesitate. “I think Lewis was more annoyed with it than I was. I thought it was great! This was pre-Lewis’s fashion sense, and I don’t think he appreciated it too much.”
That light bit of needle tracks with what we know about both men. Russell has always been comfortable laughing at the awkward early photos, the hand-me-down overalls and slightly-too-big caps; Hamilton’s self-curation — even back then — didn’t quite stretch to having his past pinned to every corridor.
The video then shifts from teenage snapshots to a near fairytale. Russell and Dudley rewind to the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, when COVID sidelined Hamilton and Mercedes called in their young gun on loan from Williams. It was Dudley’s first race working with Russell — as performance engineer, with Peter Bonnington on the pit wall — and for a few hours it looked like a story you couldn’t script.
“That car was a beast,” Russell said. “It was just so easy to drive… it did everything you wanted. It was so intuitive. Turn in, the thing would just bite, and the tyres were good, and it almost kind of felt like driving a PlayStation.”
We all remember the rest: a commanding lead, a Safety Car, the wrong tyres in the chaos, a fight back to P2, a puncture. Race lost; reputation made. “I mean, we should have won that race,” Russell added. “Led the whole race. Safety Car. Wrong tyres. Went down to P6, I think, came back to P2, was chasing Checo for the win, and then the puncture. Somebody didn’t want me to win that day. Obviously, that was so painful for me, but my life is no different today, had we won that race or not.”
It’s a line that sits differently now. Russell has since converted promise into silverware with Mercedes, evolving from the kid in the corridors to a driver with hard edges and Sundays to his name. The Sakhir near-miss became the catalyst rather than the career what-if.
The Baku anecdote, though, is the bit that lingers. It’s a window into the way Mercedes operates when the garage doors are down: a super-serious race team that still finds time to stick 30 copies of an embarrassing photo around the office, and a reminder of how long Russell’s ties to the place run. It also hints, gently, at a dynamic that defined a chapter of Mercedes’ recent past — Lewis and George, different generations, different rhythms, often aligned, sometimes not — without needing to spell it out.
As for whether Hamilton ever made peace with the prank? You get the sense that’s staying on the Brackley WhatsApp. But if someone’s looking for that old photo, try the bottom drawer of the engineers’ office. It’s probably still in there, curling at the edges, waiting for another outing.
