Mercedes driver George Russell has drawn a compelling parallel between preparing for a Formula 1 Grand Prix and studying for a school exam. The Briton shared his philosophy on the Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show following his home race at Silverstone, where he recovered from a slow puncture to claim a podium finish.
Russell detailed the meticulous groundwork that underpins his race weekends, describing a deliberate separation between preparation and execution.
“I like to do my preparation and work very hard on the week off,” Russell explained. “But then once I arrive at the race track, I go in with an open mind. I see it as revising for an exam and then performing the exam.”
He elaborated: “Once you’re in that room performing and doing that exam, you can’t do your revision. So you’ve just got to trust what you’ve learned before. Unless you cheat, which I know when I was a kid doing some of my exams—especially my French exam—I was always looking over my shoulder.”
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Pauline Ballet – Formula 1
“But you can’t quite do that when you’re in the race car. So I think just trust in what you’ve learned, trust in your instincts, and just let it flow.”
This philosophy of “letting it flow” has become a recent mantra for the 28-year-old, with team principal Toto Wolff often instructing him to simply “just drive” during races. Russell emphasized, however, that this instinctive approach is only possible because of the extensive communication that takes place behind closed doors.
“He will give me a message that may not make a lot of sense to the average viewer,” he said of his race engineer Marcus Dudley. “But because we’ve spoken about this a million times before, you know exactly what it means.”
