George Russell reveals Lewis Hamilton breakthrough after psychologist conversation

George Russell has recounted a positive conversation he had with a psychologist as he prepared to face Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.

Russell was promoted to a seat at Mercedes in 2022 after spending his first three seasons on the grid with Williams.

The Briton was called up to race alongside Hamilton, who had won championships in six of the previous eight seasons.

While it marked a significant moment for Russell's career, he admitted it felt daunting to go head-to-head against Hamilton at the time.

"It was a huge day because it felt like climbing the ladder,” Russell said on the Untapped podcast. “This didn’t feel like one step up. It felt like I took three steps in one go,

"And over those coming months before I started the season with Mercedes, I was thinking ‘I believe in myself. I believe I can beat anybody’.

“But the truth is, you don’t know until you go up against the best ever.

"And I’m stepping into his team where he’s been for 10 years. Everything’s built around him. I’m coming in.

“I feel fast, I feel young, I feel healthy and ready to take the fight. But you just don’t know.”

As he prepared for his first season in Mercedes colours, Russell revealed a conversation he had with his psychologist, which placed him in a stronger frame of mind.

"So, I was thinking about how I’m going to deal with this psychologically until one day I had a really good conversation with my psychologist about it, how I should deal with the pressure of being his team-mate.

“I concluded that when I walk into the garage, I’m jumping into my race car. I’m putting my helmet on. I’m putting my visor down.

”It should not matter if my team-mate on the garage next door is a seven-time world champion or if he’s a rookie or if there’s nobody there, because I’m in control of my own destiny.

“And that’s the approach that I had. This is on me to perform.”

Russell spent his rookie F1 season against Robert Kubica, before he was joined for the following two years by Nicholas Latifi.

Having outpaced both in the intra-team battle by a wide margin, Russell knew Hamilton would be a different level of opponent.

As a result, he adjusted his expectations.

"And finally, taking acceptance that if I were to finish ahead of Lewis in a season,” he said. 

“I think my stats against previous team-mates were [that] I finished ahead of them 95% of the time.

“I concluded 'if I beat Lewis in a season, that’s going to be an amazing achievement. But I’m not going to beat him 95% of the time. So, if I beat him 55% of the time over a year, that’s amazing'. 

“But you’ve got to accept 45% of the time, you’re going to be behind him. And that’s totally understandable because you cannot go up against the GOAT and expect to wipe the floor with him.

"So that was probably the biggest psychological shift I had - accepting that my goal is to beat him over a season, but there will be times that I will be behind him."