What Russell's current Mercedes form ahead of Hamilton means for his F1 future

Tiny things can swing a Formula 1 race weekend.

A slippery grid spot, a snatched brake lapping a backmarker, running over debris from another car. All of those have cost Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas dearly at Imola in the three races since the Italian track returned to the calendar in 2020. Leclerc’s bad grand prix getaway last Sunday was just the first of two bits of bad misfortune, the second all his own fault…

Consider the Mercedes team in the same event. It would only have taken a few things going slightly differently and its whole weekend may well have been altogether rosier.

That, for the avoidance of doubt, means a double points finish. Something rather more wholly fortune changing would’ve been needed to get the silver cars anywhere near a podium Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Leclerc had closed behind them before the Ferrari driver whacked the Variante Alta kerbs in a late, frantic bid to snare back the second he’d shown the pace to have earned.

In the other Ferrari, Carlos Sainz’s Q2 crash was very costly to Mercedes. After the Spaniard’s second unforced error in consecutive events, returning rain meant no one remerged for the restarted segment – bar those getting in Q3 sighters, safe in the knowledge the extra precipitation had sealed their progress.

The Silver Arrows cars were struggling badly for tyre warm-up in the cool, wet conditions across the Imola weekend. It had them a rather shocking five and seven seconds off the pace in FP1 and later meant Hamilton was powerless to resist Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon coming by after his only grand prix pitstop.

The new car rules have made it much harder for the teams to deploy their previous trick of using high brake temperatures to heat the rubber from within – via the heat coming straight from the brakes onto the wheel rims – to the desired level. But it should be noted that tyre temperature generation has sometimes caught Mercedes out, even in its years of all-conquering domination.

Russell struggled with the cool, damp conditions at Imola considerably less than Hamilton

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

As one engineer at another team describes it, understanding modern F1 tyres is something of a ‘pseudo-science’ – changing from track to track – and it seems not even the best squads are immune from struggling with it. For more evidence of this, see Red Bull’s unexpected Albert Park graining and how that swung around to bite Ferrari last weekend.

At Imola, the Mercedes drivers needed to complete two consecutive flying laps to have anywhere near decent tyre temperature for qualifying fliers, which the frontrunners did not have to do, but in Q2 Sainz’s crash came just too soon.

Given their Q1 laps had put them 0.019s and 0.128s respectively off the bottom of the top 10 in that segment, with George Russell ahead of Hamilton, there’s every reason to suspect that had they been able to complete their extra lap tactic in Q2, then they were in with at least a decent shout of getting through to Q3. That would not have left Mercedes absent from the final shootout for the first time in a decade.

The Silver Arrows cars were struggling badly for tyre warm-up in the cool, wet conditions across the Imola weekend. It had them a rather shocking five and seven seconds off the pace in FP1

The pair were then stuck in the sprint – unable to make progress in the DRS/dirty air train that really stretched back from Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren. The W13’s launch-spec draggy rear wing arrangement continues to put an extra anchor on Mercedes’ campaign.

That result of 11th and 14th put Russell on the grippier, racing line side of the grand prix grid, with Hamilton on the opposite side three places back. The world champion rather paid for being out-muscled by Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll at the Villeneuve chicane on the first sprint lap, and only getting the latter back by the end.

At the second start, Russell really benefitted from the rubbered-up racing line, shooting past Mick Schumacher, and was able to follow Kevin Magnussen in the other Haas closely on the run to Tamburello.

There, they’d worked their way to the inside for the second apex, which meant both were in the perfect position to gain three spots as Ricciardo removed himself and Sainz from overall contention, while Bottas clipped the McLaren and also dropped back.

After an opportunistic Imola start, Russell found himself in sixth by the end of the first lap

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

PLUS: Why Leclerc must learn to settle for results in his bid to win an F1 title

Right place, right time – a weekend swung in a split-second. This might’ve quickly gone back the other way had Russell not saved a big slide exiting the right-hander part of the chicane.

Now Russell was running sixth and he spent the most of the first GP stint tracking and then attacking Magnussen. He didn’t get flustered by his initial attempt to get by at Tamburello going wrong and check-mated the Dane with a bold attempt at an unfancied spot – the super tight Variante Alta – shortly afterwards.

After the stops for mediums, Russell held off the charging Bottas to the finish – the former mindful of their huge 2021 crash at the same track last year, the latter determinedly not so, keen to move on now at home in his new surroundings.

Russell’s second stint was not helped by Mercedes having an issue with its front wing adjusters at his service, which left him still running a wet aero-balance set-up even in the fully dry second half.

His rear wing was also slightly higher on downforce level compared to Hamilton, per Mercedes director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin. This was “not so much as it would change the way the cars were behaving”, but still added “a couple of kph on the straights”. Overall, the extra wing aided Russell’s first stint in the wet, but the added drag was another thing to cope with when on the slicks.

And yet he did so magnificently – sealing his fourth top-five finish of the season so far, 0.6s in front of the driver he replaced in Mercedes line-up for this year, the pair gaining a bonus spot thanks to Leclerc’s late off and two extra stops. For Russell, this all came despite the understeer from running the wet set-up costing him lap time.

Hamilton was back in 13th. The gap between the Mercedes team-mates was stark and the seven-time world champion was not in an effusive mood afterwards.

Hamilton spent the entirety of the Emilia Romagna GP stuck behind Albon and Gasly

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That is understandable – this is far from the year he and Mercedes were expecting, one where Hamilton had promised: “If you think what you saw at the end of last year was my best, wait until you see this year”. Russell did offer more post-race, but he is wisely not celebrating what effectively amounts to a drubbing of his legendary team-mate for the second time in three races.

There are several reasons for this. One, Russell is just too sensible to do that. He knows rocking the boat is rarely a good option at Toto Wolff’s team – let alone when it is all at sea with an uncompetitive car. Two, he knows just how incredibly good Hamilton is and backs him to “come back strong”. And finally, that his current streak of finishing ahead owes a lot to good fortune with the second safety car timing in Melbourne.

Russell has suggested that his three years racing generally tricky machinery with Williams is helping him cope with Mercedes’ current problems – saying after the Imola race that “perhaps with my struggles at Williams driving very difficult cars, maybe that's helped in some small regard”.

After the stops for mediums, Russell held off the charging Bottas to the finish – the former mindful of their huge 2021 crash at the same track last year, the latter determinedly not so

Often in 2019, Williams and Russell treated race weekends as extended test sessions – to implement radical set-ups and car arrangements in a bid to improve their performances, even far adrift at the back. That squad is certain Russell benefitted from such trying times, where he also learned to work closely with engineers also facing the pressures that come with running a bad car.

It's interesting to note that such a tactic backfired on Hamilton in Jeddah, where a last-minute set-up alteration robbed him of rear confidence and meant he was eliminated in Q1. Although this is a mere coincidence in the story right now.

Russell is shining off-track too. He was the only Grand Prix Drivers Association director on-site during the talks that followed the Jeddah missile attack and the group as a whole seems to be more united on various issues than they have been for a long time.

On the other side of the garage, although it should be noted that it is still very early in the season, it's legitimate to wonder about Hamilton’s motivation given it's clear it will take Mercedes a while to unlock the potential it insists is in its W13 design – if it ever does in a cost-capped season.

Mercedes insists its W13 has potential - but how much of it can the team unlock?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Early in his career, and here Hamilton points out to his detractors who say he’s never had a bad car, in 2009 with McLaren, there was a regular criticism that he would let his head drop when things were against him.

Last year, he needed the fightback fury that his qualifying disqualification in Brazil unlocked to reach a driving level that eclipsed the best Verstappen offered all year. He was bullish before testing, but has already conceded the 2022 title is out of reach.

Mathematically that’s wrong, but as Shovlin says, “we need to move forward in the next two races if we are to keep the leaders within any kind of reach this year”. Plus, Russell is right, Hamilton will be back and retirement talk is very premature.

Russell needs Mercedes to address its porpoising problem – especially as it now leaves him in pain post-race. Such a step would help Hamilton too and Mercedes’ Imola upgrades were not able to fix such a fundamental issue.

When the team’s big update comes, F1 will discover if Mercedes can pull off a McLaren-like 2009 reversal – turning a title no-hoper into a winner. If that happens, Russell can bank the credit he is building with his dream team right now. And if not, he has time on his side for many years to come.

There, team and driver will be additionally bonded by their current adversity – a lesson Hamilton has taught Mercedes many times over.

Mercedes remains optimistic it can turn around its 2022 F1 form

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images