For Guenther Steiner, former Haas boss in Formula 1, George Russell may need to decide whether to continue at Mercedes if he does not want to follow a path similar to Valtteri Bottas, who for years stayed on the team as Lewis Hamilton’s support driver.
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Russell has been part of the Mercedes family since 2017, when he joined as a junior driver. In 2022, he was promoted to the main team precisely to replace Bottas. After Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, Russell seemed destined to take the lead at Mercedes, while Kimi Antonelli, still a rookie, was promoted to fill the seven-time champion’s seat.
However, in the second year of partnership, the Italian has been the most impressive competitor and holds a 59-point lead over Russell in the standings. Asked on the Red Flags podcast if Russell is the new Bottas, Steiner replied: “That’s a difficult question. Let’s see how he reacts. It seems so – I don’t know if he is or not, but it seems so. It really seems so.”
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For the former Haas boss, the Briton might look for another team if he feels he is not getting equal opportunities at Mercedes: “But that is also under his control,” he said. “Valtteri was obviously happy to be that because he stayed there forever. If George is not happy with that, he needs to find something else to do. It’s not easy to find something else to do because there are no openings for next year, but for 2028, maybe.”
“Maybe George says: ‘I don’t want to be the next Valtteri Bottas and stay here for 10 years finishing second for the rest of my life. I need to go somewhere else.’ But that’s up to him, not Mercedes, to decide,” Steiner concluded.
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