George Russell feels social media has become a dangerous platform and revealed he tries to avoid it as much as possible. In recent years, every driver on the grid apart from Sebastian Vettel have decided to have a social media presence and the teams have increasingly shown more exclusive clips and behind the scenes footage of what goes on during a Formula 1 weekend. There are many positives to this modern approach of F1 coverage, but Russell believes social media is now a negative. "Social media is a slippery and dangerous slope for all of us because everybody is shown in the best light," Russell told RacingNews365.com . "It can be very demoralising for a lot of people. You're seeing all of these people that seem to be living an incredible life, people who seem to be incredibly fit or good looking or whatever it may be, and just seeming to have had it all. You only see the top five percent of everything. "I'm even guilty of it myself, anything I post. Somebody takes 100 shots of me, I'm not going to choose the worst one, I'm going to choose the best one and it doesn't show you a true picture. "Everything I put out there is all authentic. I obviously have somebody helping me and managing my account, but all the mass messaging, all the photos are signed off, either created by me and then signed off by me and that's pretty much the extent of it. I've tried to avoid it. "The next generation who grew up with that from the beginning, it's truly worrying." Interview continues below image
The 23-year-old won a highly competitive F2 championship in 2018 and has continued to be critical about his mistakes in F1 to try and become a more complete racing driver. Russell reckons his mentality of taking a professional approach to his racing comes from the way he was brought up. "I think it just comes from being mentored practically by the people around me and understanding what will get the most out of myself and the most out of my team," added Russell. "All of this isn't either a publicity stunt or anything, all of this is just purely to try and get the best opportunity either for myself or for the team and whatever circumstance there may be. "I think I understood from the beginning it takes more than just doing the business on the track. There's so much more that goes with it. That's everything, behind the scenes to everything in front of the camera. "You've got to excel at everything you do to to be there, because at the end of the day there's only 20 drivers, and it's a ruthless sport."
Most read
