George Russell believes Kimi Antonelli will be up to the challenge left vacant by Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes F1.
Hamilton will join Ferrari next year and has ended his long-standing and highly successful partnership with Mercedes.
The Brackley-based side have opted to sign their junior Antonelli to replace the seven-time world champion.
Russell thus became the most experienced driver in Mercedes F1. However, he said this would not have a significant influence on the engineers they will rely on.
“At the end of the day, for most F1 teams, you have almost 1,000 people working on building these two cars, but you only have two drivers behind the wheel.
“And, in my case, Lewis never had a louder voice. The team listened to both of us equally because both of our opinions were extremely important.”
Russell expects Antonelli to have various ideas to propose to engineers despite his lack of F1 experience.
“It's the same for next year. Kimi is new, he's fresh. And I'm sure he'll have a lot of good ideas to bring.”
“I'm the more experienced of the two, but we'll both have the same voice.”
“We will both contribute to the development in the same way as was the case with Lewis and me.”
