George Russell has the edge over Hamilton according to Peter Windsor

After replacing Valtteri Bottas, Russell excelled in his first season as a Mercedes driver in 2022, clinching the team’s only victory. At the same time, Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion, experienced his first winless campaign since the start of his Formula 1 career in 2007.

The trend continued throughout this new season, with Russell outperforming Hamilton in four out of the five first races of the 2023 season. Hamilton qualified 13th in the Miami Grand Prix last weekend before climbing up to sixth place, just two positions behind Russell but with an 18-second delay.

Two pilots, two styles of driving

Questioned about the areas Hamilton falls short compared to Russell and his predecessor Bottas, Windsor highlighted the boldness and precision of the young man during a qualifying lap. The commentator and journalist even dares to make a glorifying comparison: “I don’t think he has any weaknesses compared to Bottas. I have nothing against Valtteri, but I don’t see any area in which he was better than Lewis. I think George is better than Lewis, much like Senna was sometimes better than Prost in qualifying. It’s just an incredible finesse, not a judgment, but just going a little further.”

Windsor supports his argument: « If Lewis leaves three centimeters, George will leave one and a half on a qualifying lap and sometimes, this will lead to an error, as was the case during the qualifying session for the sprint race in Baku. » For the 71-year-old man, these characteristics are typical of Russell’s driving because « it is the way George has always driven. He has absolutely no margin, and sometimes it gets the better of him », he believes.

And I think that’s where we could say that he has an advantage over Lewis, but it could also be said that it’s Lewis’ quality that doesn’t put him in that position and that he is above the car, and very rarely does he make the kind of mistakes that George makes when he is just on the limit.

Peter Windsor asserts that Lewis Hamilton’s mistakes are more typical errors such as a poor tire warming-up or traffic, a slow pace in traffic, or perhaps a tuning error causing the tire pressure to not match their expectations.

Bottas did not offer the same resistance to Hamilton

Windsor insisted that Bottas has never offered a serious challenge to Hamilton, adding: “I don’t see where Bottas was better than Lewis. He sometimes beat him because he had a better setup or because the race played out in his favor for some reason. It has happened that Bottas outperformed Lewis [but] that hasn’t happened very often, right?”

« Usually, Bottas was fast, but after the qualifying sessions and track changes, he would suddenly lose two or three tenths, but occasionally he was fast. I would say that’s all, and I still think that Lewis has a wider range of operational factors he can play with than George in terms of natural ability and what he can do with the car over a period of time. »

Valtteri Bottas has won 10 races in five full seasons as a Mercedes driver between 2017 and 2021, while Hamilton has won four consecutive world championships to equal Michael Schumacher’s record of seven titles.

Mercedes was then the dominant team on the grid and the competition was less pressing than in recent seasons. The Finnish driver also received messages on the radio asking him not to hinder Hamilton when the two of them were on track.