When George Russell made the step from Williams to Mercedes at the start of the season, there were plenty of question marks as to whether he would be able to match team-mate Sir Lewis Hamilton.
For the most part he has answered those with aplomb, out-qualifying the seven-time champion five times in the opening nine rounds of the year, and finishing ahead of him seven times in race trim.
The 24-year-old has three times stood on the podium as his incrementally impressive season continues, leaving no further doubts as to his talent and ability to compete with one of the best the sport has ever seen.
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Russell assesses that he has made a strong start to the 2022 campaign, and he feels fortunate that he has such an experienced and talented team-mate to learn from.
“I think it’s been not a bad start to the season personally,” he told Formula1.com.
“There is definitely room to improve in certain areas and I think obviously in a really privileged position being team-mates with Lewis and learning so much from him – how he works, how he goes about his business with his engineers, how he gets sort of the whole team motivated.
“It’s quite inspiring to see. Also on the technical side, he’s pretty impressive, which a lot of people probably won’t recognise or appreciate.”
The Silver Arrows have struggled with “porpoising” and bouncing this year as a result of the ground effect aerodynamics brought in by the new technical regulations.
It has prevented the German side from winning any races this season but, with the tools he has, the 24-year-old is satisfied with the job he is doing.
“[There is] definitely room to improve but I think in terms of results it’s been fine,” added Russell.
“I don’t think we could have probably achieved much higher results when I look at the season rationally.
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“Probably other than Bahrain, we’ve probably finished as high as we could in every single race.
“You’ve got to look at the positives, and you’ve got to look at things rationally and we can’t be disappointed that we haven’t won a race this season with the package we’ve had.
“And we’re in this development phase and I think it’s been pretty well optimised.
“As a team, I think we’ve done a great job to maximise the points available to us, so you’ve got to take that as a positive and try and continue this momentum forward.
“And hopefully when we have a faster car, we’ll be in good shape to fight for those victories.”
Russell and Hamilton head to their home British Grand Prix in Silverstone next weekend hoping to get onto the podium again in front of their adoring faithful.