In 2021, during a difficult year for Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes F1, while George Russell was making the heyday of Williams with two top 3 in qualifying in particular, many questions arose in the paddock on the reasons for the non-promotion of the British alongside Lewis Hamilton.
These questions were all the more present since Russell had made an impressive pige for Mercedes in 2020 in Sakhir, and Claire Williams revealed that it was his team that locked the young pilot, because he was the best element in Grove and his troops would not have understood to separate it.
“George wanted to go to Mercedes in the past two years and I couldn’t let him go, which I hated” said Williams in the Podcast Beyond the Grid. “I am upset by the idea of thinking about it. I needed him more than Mercedes and he was under contract.”
“If I had let him go, what message would it have sent? What would have been the impact on my team if I had let George leave? He was one of the best things we had at Williams.”
“When you negotiate with a team like Mercedes and she does not offer you what she should offer you for your star pilot, why let him go? What kind of team director would I have been if I had let George leave because Mercedes said ‘we want George now’? This is not how it works.”
“George was clearly upset and it was really difficult. It was very difficult to stay on my positions because if someone came to see me and was upset, and it was because of me because I had blocked it, it was very difficult, but I had to pass my team first.”
“Even if I would have liked to realize George’s dreams, I could not do it at the time, and this is one of the most difficult aspects of the position of team director for me. And I always said to George: ‘One day, you will be grateful for that, because it will give you strength and resilience.”
Russell’s talent has since exploded, when he is now the leader of Mercedes, and this confirms to Claire Williams what she had seen at home, namely a potential world champion: “I was lucky to have Felipe [Massa]Valtteri [Bottas]all these brilliant pilots. “
“I placed them, when I had them at Williams, all about the same level. But I think that George had the greatest potential to become world champion. And I see it. I observed the start of this season. George is at another level.”
“And that’s what I think you see with the pilots and what you saw with Max [Verstappen] Over the past two or three years, they tip over in this absolute superstar area, and George is there now. I saw a george video in the gym the other day. It looks like Terminator. This is where you go up a gear. “
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