Mercedes have heaped praise upon George Russell after an "incredibly good" first year with the team.
Russell joined the Silver Arrows hoping, or perhaps even expecting, to be in a title fight in 2022. Alas, that was not the case, as Mercedes instead spent much of the year playing catch-up to Red Bull and Ferrari having got their car development for the new regulations wrong.
Amid those performance problems, all Russell and Lewis Hamilton could do was maximise the amount of points they could earn and take advantage whenever a rival slipped up – and, for the most part, they nailed it.
Russell was particularly impressive, finishing in the top five at 19 of the 22 races and securing Mercedes' only win of the year, in Brazil. That consistency helped him to finish 35 points ahead of his seven-time world champion team-mate in the drivers' standings.
Reflecting on the 24-year-old's debut campaign with Mercedes, motorsport strategy director James Vowles made it clear he and the team could not have expected much more of the young Brit. "I think on a whole it doesn't really take us to tell you this, but George did a very good job this year," he said.
"He is against the best in the world and that's your reference. What is very clear is that at the beginning of the year when we had a car that was difficult Lewis was using his wealth of experience to help us in order to improve the car and really move us forward as a part of the team.
"George in that period of time was just really focussed on learning, embedding himself into the team and he scored a number of results really that benefitted him as a result of that. Irrespective, his qualifying pace I think is within a tenth of where Lewis ended up – his race pace was very, very strong throughout the year.
"That's really what we were looking for, how does he fit into our environment? How does he fit into the team? How does he work with Lewis? How does he work with everyone else? I think in all of those he did an incredibly good job."
Vowles conceded that Russell had to contend with "a big step up" from his previous seat at strugglers Williams, which made it all the more impressive that he was able to get such good results so quickly. "I think he adapted very quickly and very well," he added.
