George Russell: Safe? This track is the opposite. Clip a kerb and you’re into a wall

“Do these go fast?” Russell asks, as he climbs onto his rickety bicycle. Hopefully not. And so, without a roar of engines, the Mercedes driver pedals off the grid to lead us around the 14 corners of a strikingly tight 4.259km circuit that seems to twist on itself like a Scalextric track.

“It’s a very spectacular circuit, one of my favourites, but you have to keep your wits about you,” Russell says as we head off down the first straight approximately 175mph slower than he will during the Dutch Grand Prix tomorrow (Sunday).

The lap walk has long been a tradition for F1 drivers but Russell explains that using two wheels has become his preference. Cycling is his thing, partly for fitness - whether on holiday or around Richmond Park when he is in London - but also because it helps to clear his head.

“I try to finish with the engineers and then go out on my bike for a circuit,” he explains. “It’s good therapy after I’ve been staring at a screen. And obviously you are taking in any details, examining the track for any changes from last year, inspecting the surface. Walking a lap can take an hour. I can cycle two or three.”

When we pass Carlos Sainz, the Ferrari driver, who is jogging along with his engineers, in a low-speed overtaking manoeuvre it seems a very smart move.

Turn 1

As we head down the straight, Russell is already computing details. He glances up at the flags at the top of the main grandstand which show a stiff breeze coming straight off the North Sea. The Zandvoort circuit is yards from the coast.

“The wind is so important,” Russell says. He explains how the headwind will slow the car on the straight but, in applying more downforce, allow more speed heading into the first turn. “So if the wind is like this it will be exceptionally fast [into the bend]. It could be 10mph faster, probably going round this corner at 120, 130mph. It can be six tenths of a second quicker or slower depending on the wind, so it can change substantially. So we are looking at the wind strength - is it gusty? And obviously somewhere on the track will be a flip side.”

As we pause to chat, a few fans have made it onto the circuit and run over for a photo. Russell deals with the attention politely but there are only so many selfies that any star can pose for. He has been spotted a lot more since he joined Mercedes this season to become Lewis Hamilton’s teammate. The phenomenal success of the documentary series Drive to Survive on Netflix has made them all more recognisable to a much wider public. “And there are only 20 or so of us,” he says.

Russell has been living in London with his girlfriend, Carmen, who works in finance, but plans to join the large cohort of drivers in Monaco by the end of this year. Most of his friends are on the F1 circuit and he estimates that he could spend as few as 70 days at home in 2022.

Russell will move this year for all the benefits of the Monegasque life. And it offers better cycling than Richmond Park too.

Turn 3

Television flattens contours. It never captures the rolling hills of a golf course such as Augusta National and certainly does not do justice to the thrillingly steep banking on Zandvoort’s turn three, Hugenholtz, which was built up to add character and, potentially, drama given the possibility of cars side-by-side around this bowl of a corner.

“The exciting corner,” Russell says with relish. Like a velodrome, I suggest. “It really is,” he agrees. “It’s pretty impressive isn’t it. You have one corner like this in the calendar.”

The slope builds from an angle of less than five degrees at the bottom up to 19 degrees at its peak, which gives a fascinating dilemma to the drivers. “It’s about using the bank to your advantage,” Russell says. “You can take the tight line by sticking to the left. But if you go in too early here, your front left wheel will be popping off the ground and you are losing downforce, so you want to bring it out wide and fire that speed.”

I wonder how it feels physically to be hammering around this bend, high at the top of the banking.

“It’s quite strange, because it doesn’t feel as much lateral-G [side-to-side G force], but there is quite a lot of vertical-G, because the car is compressing into the circuit when you go round here and you are often almost bottoming the car out,” he says, describing the sensation of feeling pushed down hard into the tarmac.

Russell describes Zandvoort, built into dunes on the coast soon after the Second World War, as one of the most arduous circuits. Singapore is the most gruelling, with the heat and humidity and lack of airflow, but Zandvoort’s tightness acts like a punishing rollercoaster. “It’s relentless,” he says. “It doesn’t give you a second to breathe.”

Turn 6

As we cycle past a new hospitality tent with pounding music and whooping fans - “the Dutch can get quite rowdy,” Russell says, smiling, especially with Verstappen leading the championship for Red Bull - we come over a rise and then drop down towards a right-hand bend.

“This is a great corner here,” Russell says of coming over the crest and very quickly down into a big turn. “That’s almost flat out in seventh gear, 165 or 170mph, really fast.” And with a high degree of jeopardy.

He talks of ensuring that the speed is right to ensure maximum grip as the car goes down then up in the turn. “If you are a little bit slower on the entry and wait for the car to compress you can really power through the corner,” he explains. “If you carry too much speed in then you understeer off in that direction.”

Russell points to a wall of tyres up on the left which do not seem very far away at all. “You will definitely know about it if you get it wrong,” he says, with a smile of understatement. It is a reminder, if any were needed after watching Zhou Guanyu rolling so terrifyingly at Silverstone, of the dangers. Does this circuit feel safe? “Probably the opposite,” Russell replies, matter-of-factly. “So tight, so quick. No margin for error. If you clip a kerb, drop a wheel and it pushes you wide you are straight into the wall. A lot of these circuits have tarmac run-offs, but none of that here.”

We chat a little more about risk. Russell sits on the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association as one of only two directors, with Sebastian Vettel, under the former driver and chairman Alex Wurz. He is only 24, but already has the air of a confident spokesman with the respect of his fellow racers.

“I have always wanted to get involved and have my say if there are issues when I feel strongly,” he says. “It might be safety or how a track is set up. I am hoping to be in this sport a long time, ten or 15 years, so I would like to help make it more safe and more exciting, if there are any ways to do that.”

Exciting how? Russell reflects on the e-sports racing that filled the gap during lockdown. Seeing himself on camera, with all the concentration and focus, made him think about the human tension and emotion that is lost as drivers pull on their balaclavas and helmets.

“I don’t know if in ten years’ time there could be a transparent helmet, or a canopy like on a fighter jet,” he says. “I think that would be pretty incredible if you had that enclosed cockpit and the camera on our faces and you could see the physicality.”

Turn 12

We come to a new feature at the second part of the Hans Ernst chicane. Cars spilling over the kerb on the left-hander have previously dragged gravel on to the track, so Zandvoort is experimenting with a one-metre strip of gravel that is effectively glued down. “It’s the first time I have seen it, so I’m intrigued,” Russell says as he approaches the new surface. “Oh wow. Unique.”

Sainz is here too, and the two drivers chat through possibilities. “I thought we could run [on] it but not any more,” the Ferrari driver says.

The two men take a few minutes to bemoan the domination of Red Bull at the previous race in Spa. They chat about frustrations with vibrations and grip and straight-line speed as they try to close the gap.

For Russell, after three years outperforming a poor Williams car to earn his move to Mercedes, it has not been the season that he would have imagined in a team who had been constructors’ champions for the previous eight years.

Individual consistency has brought third to fifth placings in 13 of 14 races, and Russell does sit just ahead of Hamilton in the standings, but securing his maiden F1 victory has been frustratingly out of reach.

“I am here to win championships, win races,” he says. “I will take position three, four, five and it’s a big improvement on last year but it is not where I want to be, or the team. Their aspirations are greater than that.”

He talks of working hard with the engineers to make improvements and the rapid learning that has come from a season of challenges. “I recognise that you need to have a bit of engineering knowledge and background to get the most out of your team and the car. How to utilise everything in your power - and that comes with experience as well,” he says.

With that in mind, he explains how the engineers go round the circuit with a device that can calibrate the degree of roughness of each part of the track. “They can compare year after year and the corners that are worse for [tyre degradation]. It gives you a really good indication of how to set the car up, the corners most damaging for the tyres.”

As we go round, the racing line on sector two is notably rougher. “Imagine your tyres digging into those rocks,” he says. Russell talks of avoiding “leaning into” the tyres here compared to, say, the right-hander of turn one.

“You probably have a thought in your head that if you slide the tyre at this point you are going to damage it,” he says. “So we start to build that picture of what it will be like on Sunday. Is it high or low degradation? Is it the front or rear that is going to be the limitation?”

The more he talks, discussing how the weather changes and the different track temperatures will affect performance over the weekend, the more it is clear how many different aspects there are to the job.

But one matters most. “I love driving, I love getting the most out of the car and racing. But I love winning more than I love driving.”

Final bend

We eventually come round to another dramatic sweeping banked bend; the final one with a banking between 15 and 18 degrees. Russell will plan to take a high line to be able to turn into the final straight aggressively. “So you can get the downhill swoop,” he says.

There are more changes to take in, with a move in the drag reduction system (DRS) line back down the track. “Because it’s a tight and twisty circuit, there is only one overtaking opportunity. That’s the first corner.” Moving the DRS line should, he thinks, give “an extra 15 metres, so about four car lengths into turn one, to overtake. Certainly not insignificant, especially on a circuit like this.”

As he chats, safety marshals come over and hand Russell a pack of Dutch waffles. He politely accepts, though he does not look like a man likely to eat them.

He has the focus of a man who decided as a teenager that, while his mates could go out and drink cider, he was going to devote himself to his career. As we finish the lap and head back to the Mercedes motorhome, Russell reflects on the journey he made since leaving Wisbech Grammar School at 14 to become a driver earning pounds 5 million a year.

“I did homeschooling,” he says. “We made a choice so that I could continue in karting and travel around Europe.”

We talk a bit more about the life of an F1 driver, time for hobbies (the lack of it) and chasing his ambition. “Sitting here now it feels like the right choice,” he says, before heading off on a faster, more expensive bike more appropriate for a man of his speed.

-The Times

Originally published as George Russell: Safe? This track is the opposite. Clip a kerb and you’re into a wall