Russell says Mercedes’ post-Hamilton reset is paying off: “Sometimes you need to break the mould”
George Russell isn’t dressing it up. Mercedes feels different without Lewis Hamilton — and that’s exactly the point.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, Russell called Hamilton’s departure to Ferrari at the end of 2024 a “fresh start” for the Brackley team, and one that’s been healthy for both sides. After 11 seasons together and six of Hamilton’s seven titles in silver, the split was always going to reshape the place. Russell’s view: it needed to.
“For sure, it’s a different feeling within the team,” he said. “But ultimately, you only look towards one thing, which is the performance… It’s really good for us as a team; a fresh start. Sometimes you need to break that mould to find yourself back on track.”
Russell has stepped into the lead-driver role alongside rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli for 2025, with Mercedes trying to turn understanding of the current ground-effect rules into something more consistent. The early promise gave way to a slump when a suspension update introduced more unpredictability than poise — the sort of change that looks great in CFD and bites in real life.
Canada proved the exception, and a telling one: Russell won in Montreal while Antonelli bagged his first F1 podium, a glimpse of what this car and this pairing can produce when the window is right. The troubleshooting since has been about expanding that window instead of chasing setup band-aids from one circuit to the next.
“We obviously started really well. Now we’ve had a run of bad form. I hope we can get that back on track, but there’s always pros and cons to every change that you make in any organisation,” Russell added.
No one at Mercedes pretends losing Hamilton was anything but seismic. But the reset it triggered — fresh voices, a new driver dynamic, a chance to reframe processes hardened over a decade of dominance — has clearly been embraced. The team has been burned before by mid-season development missteps; the trick now is converting lessons from those stumbles into stable performance before the 2026 regulations rip up the map again.
For Russell, the equation is simple. Hamilton gets a new chapter in red. Mercedes gets a clean slate in silver. And if Canada was more than a one-off, this “fresh start” might yet become a proper revival.
