George Russell gets new nickname after breaking Nico Rosberg record

George Russell has been one of the stars of the F1 season so far, despite his Mercedes team’s problems with porpoising and general lack of pace compared with Red Bull and Ferrari.

Following three years of over-performing with backmarkers Williams, it was always going to be intriguing to see how he matched up against seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. So far he has come through the test with flying colours, finishing ahead of his teammate in the last seven races and breaking a record previously held by Nico Rosberg, who beat Hamilton in six consecutive races between Mexico 2015 and Russia 2016. He also sits 37 points ahead of his illustrious stablemate in the standings.

At Williams, Russell was renowned for extracting everything and more from his car in qualifying, regularly starting races higher than his machinery deserved. That led to him being nicknamed ‘Mr Saturday’. Due to Williams’ lack of pace, he often dropped back in races, although he still scored a number of points finishes for the Grove outfit.

This season, Russell has been able to shine on both Saturday and Sunday, shedding his ‘Mr Saturday’ moniker and being given a new nickname by his race engineer after finishing third at Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“So strat 1 over the line and that’s another podium for Mr Consistent,” said the engineer after the chequered flag. Russell replied: “Nicely done, team, well done. I think the podium is a bit of an overstretch today, but you gotta be there at the end. Let’s keep pushing.”

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Russell secured the final step on the podium despite the vicious porpoising which again afflicted the team in Baku and left Hamilton in agony and struggling to get out of his car after the race.

“We were smashing the ground every single corner and every lap for 90 minutes, it was pretty brutal,” said Russell. “It’s what we’ve got to deal with it at the moment, there’s not much we can do in the short-term. There’s lots of intelligent people, hugely talented engineers in the sport so I’m sure we’ll find a solution.

“We didn’t get the podium on pure pace today but we did it because the team have worked very hard to deliver a reliable car, we did a good job to be ahead of the midfield and obviously we picked up on Ferrari’s misfortune. As a team, we take that.”

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