25/09/2024
NEWS STORY
As Christian Horner suggests that George Russell might be a good fit for Red Bull, Toto Wolff takes the bait.
Quite whether you'd describe Red Bull's talent pool as an embarrassment of riches is up to you, but the works team and its Faenza-based sister outfit do have a lot of drivers at their disposal courtesy of Helmut Marko's young driver programme.
While the future of Daniel Ricciardo looks bleak, so too does that of Sergio Perez, and while Liam Lawson is clearly being lined up for promotion the big question is who is next in line to get a call-up.
Doing what he does best, Horner threw a spanner into the works at the weekend when he hinted at looking outside Red Bull's driver pool in a bid to present the strongest possible line-up(s) next season.
Admitting that he has Isack Hadjar and Ayumu Iwasa 'on the books', he added, "we're not afraid to go out of the pool. George Russell is out of contract at the end of next year. It would be foolish not to take that into consideration."
Wolff was quick to rise to the bait.
"He is always stirring sh*t up, it is part of the game," said the Austrian. "George is a Mercedes driver and has been forever and hopefully will be forever. We have a long contract with him."
Indeed, third in the 2016 F3 Championship, the following year Russell remained in the series, though leaving Hitech GP for ART Grand Prix.
Having made his F1 debut with McLaren in late 2015, as part of hisd prize for winning the 2014 Autosport BRDC Award, in 2016 Russell carried out simulator work for Mercedes and was recruited to the company's Junior Team programme a year later.
F1 tests with Mercedes followed and later that year (2017) the youngster took part in the FP1 sessions in Brazil and Abu Dhabi driving the Mercedes-powered Force India. A reserve driver for Mercedes in 2018, in 2019 he made his race debut with Williams.
He is a Mercedes man through and through, and is joined next season by Kimi Antonelli, another protégé of the three-pointed star.
"These two are the future," Wolff insisted. "They have been and will be Mercedes drivers, and therefore we have contracts with George and Kimi that go much longer, that are very complicated in terms of options, etc.
"Mercedes has always been a pressure cooker, but this is where we stand as a team today, we want to go with these two."