George Russell Exclusive Interview: The AMG Mercedes Petronas F1 Star on the Art of Driving Fast

The 2026 Formula 1 season that kicks off this weekend in Melbourne, Australia, looks like one of the most wide-open campaigns in decades. That is, at least going by the entirely unclear results of preseason testing of cars built to massively revised technical regulations representing one of the biggest season-to-season changes in F1 history. Nothing but questions hang over which team will be strongest out of the gate, but plenty of paddock observers think there’s more than a fair chance the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 squad will be at the sharp end of the grid. Season speculation aside, we caught up with its lead driver, 28-year-old Briton George Russell, to see what advice the five-time grand prix winner has for driving enthusiasts everywhere.

MotorTrend: Let’s not do this with the same questions you and all the F1 drivers get week after week during grand prix weekends. In fact, oddly, it doesn’t seem like you guys are asked too often about the actual art and skill of driving, so let’s chat about that.

George Russell: OK, all right, let’s hear it!

MT: If you were to write the George Russell manual on high-performance driving for amateurs and enthusiasts and even aspiring racers, what are some of the keys to what you do in the cockpit? We often hear vision is at the top of the list; a lot of people, and you see this occur on the street, don’t understand that where you look hugely impacts how well you can drive the car.

GR: Yeah. It’s interesting you say the vision because from my side, it’s something I spent some time thinking about, where I look and then analyzing where I look. It made me slower when I started thinking [too much] about this.

MT: I didn’t expect that response. But of course, drivers need to work on keeping their eyes up in general ...

GR: Yeah. There’s lots of different views and theories and X, Y, Z. For me, for an amateur driver, I would say the No. 1 thing is to give smooth inputs to the car. Smooth on the wheel, smooth on the gas pedal. Not overly aggressive on the brakes.

If you do that, you’ll be in control of the car, and that’s where you can build up. This is from an amateur level, where if you’re 10 seconds off the pace and you want to get to five seconds off the pace, then that is going to be the first step of taking that five-second jump—making smooth inputs. Once you’re talking from a second off the pace to half a second off the pace, that’s obviously your next step.

The second point I would say is just maximizing the racetrack. Using all of the available racetrack to brake on the outside of the corner, make sure you’re apexing on a nice line, and then use all the track on the exit. I think if you’re doing those main points, you’ll very quickly get to within seven seconds of a pro on a given racetrack. But then obviously, the closer you get into that peak performance, that’s where the intricacies come in.

MT: One big challenge is reading how much cornering grip you have and knowing how much speed you can carry into a corner, so you’re on the limit but not over the limit. How did you get to that level when you were first karting? Or were you a supernatural talent on day one just by the luck of the genetic draw?

GR: When I was two years old, I had a quad bike, and I used to ride this quad in a wet, muddy field most days until the age of seven. On the quad bike, I was drifting, I was sliding. I was happy with the quad moving beneath me. It wasn’t gripping to the grass; I was constantly sliding. And I think when I got into a go-kart I had that natural confidence to allow the go-kart to slide beneath me and feel that grip.

Is there something that can be taught? Of course, but ultimately this just comes down to that feeling you have in your ass and in your back, and in the car or go-kart moving and gripping, and feeling when it grips. It’s like if you’re running across a wet piece of concrete, knowing if you’re going to slip over or not. How do you know if you’re going to slip over? If you run across it 1,000 times, you’ll know how slippery it is, how grippy it is, and how to deal with a bit of a slide. But if you only do it 10 times, there’s more chance of falling over. The truth is, you just gotta practice, practice, practice.

MT: What do you do if you live somewhere like Los Angeles, where I’m chatting to you from, where unlike where you grew up in the U.K., there isn’t much rain or mud to practice that kind of car control on?

GR: I don’t think that’s the be all, end all. If you put old tires on the kart [or a car] and then new tires on, and you keep changing the variables and exposing somebody to as many different scenarios as possible and just practice, practice, practice, that will build into muscle memory.

MT: Do you have any more specific advice for a young kid who’s giving karting a shot, even the indoor karting that appears to have become more popular than ever before? These places are popping up everywhere, especially in the U.S., along with sim-racing centers.

GR: I think the best way to progress, what I used to do when I was about 8 years old, is on a practice day, I would always find the fastest driver, and I’d slow down and let him drive in front of me, and I’d try and follow him: Watching his lines, watching how he’s braking, watching the angle of the go-kart when they’re braking. Naturally, that driver’s going to pull away from you. But over time, if you keep doing this and you keep following the fastest driver of that day, you will improve.

MT: On a bit of a more advanced level, the term “car rotation” is used a lot more these days than it used to be; it’s a common reference on F1 and other race broadcasts. But I’m not sure the majority of people, unless they drive on racetracks, really get what it means from the driver’s side. In essence, you’re trying to get the car’s rear end to respond better on the entry to a corner rather than relying solely on the front tires to turn the car ...

GR: I think if you imagine a car almost like a bit of a pendulum—I’m trying to think about how to describe this. Let’s say if you are rotating ... I’m trying to think how to do this simplistically.

MT: Say, like a pivot?

GR: Yeah, if you are pivoting something around its axis, the back of the thing is going to turn around the front. That is, let’s say, fantastic rotation. But in a race car, that means you’ll be spinning around because the front is stuck, and the rear is pivoting around the front. That’s an extreme case.

Spinning off is where you have an unbelievable amount of rotation, so that’s obviously bad. Now, if you go to the other extreme, if it’s pivoting further rearward, that front is not gripping, and you’re just going forward [with big understeer]. So I turn the steering wheel and I’m going forward, I’m no longer spinning around, but I’m actually going forward now, and the car isn’t turning. That’s another extreme.

We’re looking for that balance somewhere in the middle. You don’t want a car that pivots so quickly around the front that you spin off, but you don’t want it pivoting so slowly that you cannot physically rotate the car around the corner other than by going slower. For us in F1, we’re balancing the aerodynamics, putting as much aerodynamics in the front of the car to help that pivot. I can also brake more aggressively into the corner and have more weight transfer on the front and keep the nose of the car down, and then the rear is pitching up to help that rotation.

But it’s very challenging from the entry of the corner to the middle of the corner to the exit of the corner, because as the car is braking and the attitude of the car is different [through those points], you require something different in each phase.

MT: When your car isn’t handling the way you want it to in that regard, what can you do as a driver to combat it, in terms of driving style or tools available to you in the cockpit?

GR: I think everyone has a different approach. You can be more aggressive in the traction phase to overheat the rear tires a little bit more to take grip away from the rear to change that balance. In that case, I’m trying to actively give myself less grip on the rear of the car to give me a better front-to-rear balance. I can change my brake balance. I can put my brake balance more on the rear to, again, reduce grip from the rear to give myself a better overall car balance.

You can change your driving style. I would probably, also, we call it “V” the corner more: carrying less speed at the apex and holding the brake for longer, and [driving like] a bit more stop-start rather than nicely carrying the speed through the corner. There’s many different techniques that we have in the locker. And given the corner, the circuit, you need to implement a different technique for a given limitation.

MT: Let’s switch to the road for a moment. What are the biggest mistakes you see when riding around with friends or family, other than people looking at their phones?

GR: I think everyone has different quirks; I wouldn’t say there’s a common trend, to be honest. For example, my girlfriend: Because she’s always been driving as a passenger to me, whenever she’s behind the wheel she’s trying to jump into that space at the roundabout when there’s a small gap. Or go really quick off the junctions and around some of the bends but is a bit more erratic. I’m telling her to slow down a little bit. But she’s like, “Yeah, well, that’s what you do.” I said, “Yeah, well, it’s my job.”

My biggest advice for people on the road is to not pretend it’s the racetrack, because it’s not the racetrack. I’ve been guilty of this in the past as a young kid, driving quickly on the roads, and roads I knew perfectly well. Once, I got to this one bend, and there was a load of diesel spilled on the ground, and I went off. Fortunately, it was just through a field. I was totally under control, but the environment changed. Whenever people drive me around, sometimes they’re trying to impress me with how they drive. And I tell them, “Slow down because this isn’t a racetrack.” I’m not impressed by anyone driving quickly on the road.

MT: Speaking of places to practice, what’s your take on driving/racing simulators? Some of the F1 drivers and other pros, especially Max Verstappen, are all into them. Do you see a lot of real value in sims?

GR: I think the sim is great. I remember when during the pandemic [a lot of pro drivers] did these e-sports races. I was nervous before the races and before the qualifiers because I wanted to win. That was good preparation for race craft because it’s still racing. But if you do a million laps on a simulator, that will make you quick—on the simulator. The same way as you do a million laps in a race car, is that going to make you quick on a simulator? No.

These guys do the sim because there’s benefits for the race craft, there’s an enjoyment factor. I really enjoy driving on the sim and doing races on the sim, but I use it for my pleasure. I don’t think it has that direct of a correlation to, let’s say, Formula 1. I think it’s like a tennis player playing padel. The principles are the same—you’re still holding a racket, [using] a ball. You’re on a court. But there’s something different.

MT: Does it help you learn tracks more quickly, though? One amazing thing about pro drivers is how quickly you all get up to speed, up to the limit, on a racetrack you may never have driven before? Of course, that’s always been the case long before sims were around, so where does that ability come from?

GR: Yeah. I think a lot of it just comes down to intuitiveness to begin with. If you’re driving a race car that you’ve got experience with, you know the limits of that race car. And then when you get to a new circuit, you know the angle of the corner, so I know that I can brake 75 meters before the corner. My car can go through this type of bend at this given speed.

Once you’ve done two laps, you know the grip level that the race car and the circuit have given you. Then you know how to push it and get the most out of it. I’ve become over time much quicker getting into my peak performance because I’ve got so much confidence in my race car. I know I’ve got four years of experience now in a Mercedes. I know how it’s going to handle when it’s hot, when it’s cold, when the tires are new, when the tires are used, on high downforce and low downforce.

I just know this. I’ve been taught this over the past four years. When I go to a track, I know where those boundaries are going to be. Now, you’re always going to make a mistake here and there or go over the limit. Or something’s going to catch you out. It just comes with experience, I think. If you’ve got it, you’ve got it.