What’s going on between Hamilton and Russell?
Despite their frustrations with team orders in Japan, Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are not mortal enemies.
The internet is abuzz with chatter about an apparent rift between Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, but some of the speculation has blown the issue completely out of proportion.
Hamilton and Russell have been Mercedes teammates since the start of 2022. They have previously been a strong pairing, but their working relationship has come under scrutiny in the past two races.
In Singapore, Russell stayed ahead of Hamilton in the final laps of the race, even though it became clear that Russell couldn’t overtake Lando Norris for 2nd.
The race ended with many wondering whether Russell should’ve been moved aside to let Hamilton have a go.
A week later, the pair arrived in Japan and early in the race, Hamilton fought aggressively with Russell, swooping past him at turn one and later pushing him off the track at Spoon Corner.
But, the incident that really got people talking came with about a dozen laps to go in the race, when Mercedes spectacularly issued a team order for Russell to cede to Hamilton, because Hamilton had fresher tyres.
Unfortunately for Mercedes, they dithered and debated the team order internally - and it ended up causing angst for both drivers.
Hamilton was frustrated that Mercedes delayed the call and he also didn’t agree with their subsequent request that he then provide the DRS to Russell - Hamilton said post-race that this “made no sense”, according to Motorsport.com.
Meanwhile, Russell initially protested the team order and suggested an alternative idea, though eventually he obliged.
Once Hamilton was through, Russell pleaded for Hamilton’s DRS support, remarking: “He pushed me off the track earlier, [it’s] the least he can do.”
Things certainly got heated and afterward, Mercedes tried to downplay the frustration that both drivers had expressed.
“I think we have got into the habit over the years of not reading too much into what is said in the heat of the moment amid the pressure in the cockpit,” Mercedes chief communications officer, Bradley Lord, told Motorsport.com.
While it sounds like a typical answer, there’s probably a lot of truth to it.
Post-race, neither Hamilton nor Russell took aim at each other when discussing the incident. According to The Race, Russell even said there were “zero hard feelings”.
This is important for understanding why there isn’t a major rift.
If we cast our minds back to 2014, when Hamilton fell out with teammate Nico Rosberg, it was abundantly clear that things were not good.
In that year’s Monaco Grand Prix, Hamilton publicly implied that Rosberg had purposefully made a mistake to grab pole position, and the next day the two refused to speak (or even look at each other) on the podium after Rosberg won the race.
Let’s be clear: Russell and Hamilton were not anywhere near this point in Japan, yet some of the post-race coverage was brazen and talked up the tension.
British tabloid The Daily Express claimed that Mercedes were being urged to sack George Russell, even though the urging was only coming from a few fans on Twitter.
Another tabloid, The Daily Mail, claimed Russell might have to leave Mercedes … because apparently team boss Toto Wolff favors Lewis Hamilton.
Claims like these are just crazy.
At this stage, the evidence suggests that Mercedes had two frustrated drivers in Japan because the team was indecisive about issuing a team order.
There simply isn’t enough evidence to say that there’s a fundamental problem and thus Russell has to go.
Remember that just last month, Mercedes demonstrated their faith in both drivers by extending their contracts, which will keep them as teammates for the next two years.
They wouldn’t have done that if the pair were mortal enemies.
All in all, this drama has actually masked a much more intriguing Mercedes storyline that occurred in Japan.
After the race, Hamilton was unusually pessimistic about his team’s situation.
He told F1.com that his car was a “handful” and it was bouncing and sliding.
He said he had no idea where their car was going to be in 2024 and claimed that the next six months would need to “be the greatest six months of development that we’ve ever had.”
That really doesn’t instill much confidence for the future.