Mercedes (2022–present)
Russell joined Mercedes in 2022. From 2022 to 2024, he was paired with seven-time World Drivers' Champion Lewis Hamilton. The team placed third in 2022, second in 2023, and fourth in 2024. Hamilton left at the end of the 2024 season and was succeeded by Junior Team member Kimi Antonelli.
The timing of Russell's move to Mercedes was unfortunate, as it coincided with a regulations change that ended Mercedes's dominance of the sport. Mercedes's new aerodynamics concept performed very well in simulations but was difficult to drive in real life. The team scored one victory in the first two years of the ground effect era.
Russell and Hamilton spent the first nine races of the 2022 season testing experimental parts for the Mercedes car. Although the drivers swapped testing duties every race, Russell accumulated a 34-point lead over Hamilton after round nine, which team boss Toto Wolff attributed to Hamilton's experiments backfiring. After round nine, Russell and Hamilton finished out the season essentially level on points, with Russell scoring one more point than his teammate. Despite the unfortunate season, Russell checked off several career firsts in 2022, including his first podium in a full-length race at Melbourne; his first pole position at Hungary; and his first Grand Prix and sprint race victories at Interlagos. He finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship, outscoring teammate Hamilton by 35 points.
2023 was another difficult year for Mercedes and for Russell in particular. After some promising performances at the start of the season (leading the Australian Grand Prix until an untimely red flag and scoring a podium at Barcelona), Russell's results declined in the second half of the season for a variety of reasons, including a record seven pit stops in one race (Zandvoort), an accidental last-lap crash (Singapore), an over-aggressive strategy call (Suzuka), and Hamilton colliding into him after a front-row start (Lusail).
Russell salvaged a measure of pride with a third-place finish at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which clinched second place in the Constructors' Championship for Mercedes. He finished eighth in the Drivers' Championship, the lowest for a Mercedes driver since 2012, and 59 points behind Hamilton. After the Abu Dhabi race, Russell commented that he had "let the side down a couple of times this year", but that it meant "a huge amount" to help the team finish second. Although he called his own season "a complete disaster", Mercedes gave him a two-year contract extension.
For the 2024 season, Mercedes fundamentally changed its design concept. The new Mercedes W15 was fast but inconsistent, hard on tyres, and difficult to set up properly. Although the team was not competitive until midseason, Russell commented that the staff was "making progress" behind the scenes. At round three, the Australian Grand Prix, Russell crashed heavily while trying to overtake Fernando Alonso (who received a 20-second penalty for brake-checking Russell) for sixth place on the penultimate lap. The accident left him immobile and defenceless behind a 250 km/h blind turn for ten seconds before the race director deployed the virtual safety car. However, he emerged unscathed and met with Alonso to smooth things over. Following the race, he called for automated safety cars to prevent similar incidents.
Come the midseason, Mercedes scored podium finishes in six consecutive races. Russell reeled off some of his best results in years, including a pole and podium in Montreal, his second career race victory at Spielberg (albeit after the first two drivers collided in front of him), a pole at Silverstone (followed by a mechanical retirement), and the first Formula One race win (at Spa) lost to a post-race disqualification since 1994, for which the team took responsibility. However, the media opined that he could have won the Canadian Grand Prix.
The team's form became more inconsistent as the year went on, but Russell challenged for wins at several races. At the São Paulo Grand Prix, Russell was leading the race until Mercedes ordered him to pit for new tyres right before a red-flag gave his competitors a free tyre change. Russell dominated the Las Vegas Grand Prix, qualifying on pole and leading 49 of 50 laps to take his third career victory. Russell again qualified on pole in Qatar after Max Verstappen was handed a grid penalty for driving unnecessarily slowly ahead of Russell, who was on an out-lap. Verstappen condemned Russell's appeals to the stewards for his penalty, stating he "lost all respect" for him, and warned Russell that he would overtake him at any cost—Russell claimed he said he would 'put him in the wall', which Verstappen denied. Verstappen overtook him into turn one, with Russell finishing fourth after two safety car periods.
Russell finished sixth in the Drivers' Championship, 22 points ahead of Hamilton. The team fell from second place to fourth in the Constructors' Championship, but scored four wins, quadrupling its total from the prior two seasons.
During the three years of the Russell-Hamilton partnership, the Mercedes drivers were evenly matched on track. Russell outscored Hamilton in two out of three seasons, recorded three wins to Hamilton's two, and outqualified Hamilton 39–29, while Hamilton scored 20 podiums to Russell's 14 and beat Russell on total points (697–695) after overtaking Russell on the final lap of his final race with Mercedes. After the 2024 season ended, Russell said that he "learned so much from [Hamilton] as a driver and a person," and wrote on his personal website that Hamilton "is not only the greatest driver of all time," but also "the type of person that every racing driver should aspire to be."
In 2025, Russell faced a contract year. He also received a new teammate, eighteen-year-old academy driver Kimi Antonelli, who was hyped as "F1's next big thing." Defending World Constructors' Champions McLaren were heavily favoured to claim both titles, and did. At the start of the season, Russell opined that the MCL39 was fast enough to win every Grand Prix. McLaren dismissed Russell's prediction as hyperbolic, but it proceeded to dominate the constructors' race with seven 1–2 finishes and 12 wins in the first 18 races. In addition, McLaren's Lando Norris was crowned Drivers' Champion at the final race of the season.
Russell opened the season with four podiums in six races at Albert Park, Shanghai, Sakhir, and Miami, predominantly trailing one or both McLarens. In Australia, he raced conservatively in intermittently rainy conditions and inherited third place when Oscar Piastri went off track. At Shanghai, Russell qualified second for the main race, splitting the two McLarens; strong teamwork from McLaren allowed Lando Norris to pass him at turn one, and Russell finished third. After an uneventful fifth-place finish at Suzuka with almost no overtaking within the top 10, Russell bounced back in Bahrain: he fended off Norris in the closing laps to finish second—overcoming faulty brakes and electronics—and received widespread praise from the racing press for his adaptive performance. Struggling with tyre overheating, Mercedes laboured to fifth- and sixth-place finishes in Jeddah. At Miami, Russell was out-qualified by Antonelli for the first time, before an unconventional decision to start the Grand Prix on hard tyres was rewarded with a near-free pit stop under virtual safety car conditions, helping him finish third.
Mercedes began testing major upgrades during the Imola-Monaco-Barcelona tripleheader, but the team generally lacked the pace to compete for wins. The Mercedes W16's new suspension was particularly enigmatic: introduced at Imola, it was withdrawn after one middling race. The team reintroduced it at Montreal three rounds later, and Russell controlled the race from start to finish, picking up his maiden Formula One hat-trick (taking pole, winning, and setting the fastest lap). However, the improvement quickly faded, and at Spa-Francorchamps, Russell noted that the temperamental W16 was struggling even in relatively favourable conditions. Mercedes reverted to the older suspension at Hungary one round later, and Russell scored a podium after hunting down Charles Leclerc, whose car was dramatically fading. Aside from those two podiums, Russell's next-best finish was a chaotic fourth-place at Barcelona where he qualified fourth, lost two places at the start, undercut Lewis Hamilton, passed fourth-placed Max Verstappen in the closing laps after a safety car restart, and was hit by Verstappen on track near the end of the race, for which the Dutchman expressed regret. Verstappen received a time penalty for hitting Russell, which cost him nine championship points. Ironically, after a late-season charge, Verstappen closed most of the gap to Lando Norris in the Drivers' Championship, but lost the title by two points.
Following the summer break, Russell finished fifth at Monza. He then scored his seventh podium of the season at Baku with a second-place finish, having struggled with a respiratory illness all weekend. The next round at Singapore, Russell surprised commentators by taking pole by 0.182 seconds on a track where Mercedes was not expected to be competitive. After Verstappen (who started second) unsuccessfully gambled on used soft tyres at the start, Russell got out to a large lead and cruised to victory. After the win, Mercedes announced that Russell had re-signed for the 2026 season; it later extended the deal to 2027. The team reportedly raised his salary to £30m/year, making him the third-highest-paid driver in Formula One after Verstappen and Hamilton. The team's focus shifted to 2026, and Russell scored one podium in the final six races, at Las Vegas, where he dealt with steering and tyre issues. It was his career-best ninth podium of the season.
Russell finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship with 319 points, 169 ahead of Antonelli. Mercedes returned to second in the Drivers' Championship. At the end of the season, Autosport ranked Russell the second-best driver in motorsport, between Verstappen and Álex Palou. The Daily Telegraph, The Race, The Athletic, and Autoevolution ranked Russell the second-best driver in Formula One, in each case behind Verstappen and ahead of title-winner Norris. In Formula One's official polls, the team principals ranked him fourth and the drivers ranked him third. Motor Sport ranked him fifth, although its writers considered slotting him ahead of Norris and Piastri.
Heading into a major regulation change, pundits and bookies predicted that Mercedes would have a strong season. Russell sought to manage expectations before the season, but at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, he took pole three-tenths of a second over teammate Antonelli and eight-tenths of a second over third-placed Isack Hadjar. Autosport called the margin "staggering." He won the race after an extended battle with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in the opening laps. Russell claimed the net lead when Mercedes pitted under virtual safety car on lap 12 and Ferrari stayed out, gambling for a second safety car later in the race. That gamble failed, so Russell and Antonelli nursed their tyres for 46 laps and cruised to a 1–2 finish. With the win, Russell claimed the Drivers' Championship lead for the first time in his career.
At Shanghai, Russell's fortunes began taking a serious turn for the worse, to his teammate Antonelli's benefit. During the sprint race, the Australia pattern repeated, and Russell and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton traded the lead six times in the first five laps before Hamilton's tyres faded. However, at the Grand Prix, Russell lost pole to Antonelli after technical issues in qualifying. He spent much of the race in traffic with the Ferraris, and finished second, while Antonelli eventually reached clear air and won comfortably. Antonelli then seized the championship lead at Suzuka, where Russell's race was marred by setup and electronic issues and an ill-timed pit stop. At Miami, Russell beat Antonelli in the sprint, but the Italian beat him on merit in the Grand Prix. Russell hoped to bounce back at Montreal. He won the sprint after a race-long duel with Antonelli, and looked to repeat the feat in the Grand Prix, again repeating a duel with his teammate, but retired from the lead with an engine failure. Now 43 points behind his teammate, things went from bad to worse at Monaco, where Russell failed to score at all after a disappointing qualifying, a self-inflicted time penalty, and a team-inflicted drive-through penalty, ultimately finishing in twelfth. Ultimately, the bookmakers' title favourite at the start of the season found himself in third place after the conclusion of the race, 68 points behind Antonelli and two points behind Hamilton.
Russell began clawing back at Barcelona. He was the leading driver in two out of three practice sessions and took pole position, but his luck was alternately bad and good: Hamilton seized the lead and won after Russell (again) pitted right before a virtual safety car, and, late into the race, Antonelli passed Russell after Mercedes accidentally changed Russell's race setup during a pit stop. However, Russell still picked up 18 points on Antonelli, who retired with an engine failure. Russell's stars aligned at Spielberg; after running behind Antonelli in two out of three practice sessions, Russell converted his pole position to a dominating second race win of the season; in doing so, he took second in the Drivers' Championship back from Hamilton. Antonelli qualified fourth after misreading the yellow flag signal during his final qualifying lap, and was unlucky himself to pit right before a virtual safety car. Silverstone went similarly to Barcelona: Antonelli beat Russell in the sprint race and was on pace to win the Grand Prix, while Russell's race seemed ruined after a puncture forced yet another pit stop before a virtual safety car. However, Russell finished second, passing Lewis Hamilton by gambling (correctly) that the race would end under safety car conditions. Antonelli initially fell to ninth after part of his car's bodywork broke, and a time penalty dropped him out of the points. His fortunes tumbled once more at Belgium, where he qualified fourth to Antonelli's pole. During the opening lap of the Grand Prix, he was hit by Hamilton on the run to Les Combes, beaching him and forcing him to retire. The contact also inflicted damage to his Mercedes' bodywork. Having began the weekend 25 points behind Antonelli in the Drivers' Championship, his younger teammate won the Grand Prix to extend his advantage, 50 points ahead; he himself dropped to third behind Hamilton. Following the race, Russell did not put the blame for his retirement on Hamilton, who received a penalty for the incident. He stated that the contact was a racing incident and criticised an electrical issue that diminished his engine's power and disallowed battery deployment across Eau Rouge, leaving him vulnerable to other drivers going across the Kemmel Straight, reiterating his criticisms from his team radio message shortly following the incident.
Russell and Antonelli are contracted to remain at Mercedes for the 2027 season.
