Williams driver George Russell revealed, on the Beyond the Grid podcast of F1, that he was about to join BMW as a full-time DTM driver, only to be approached by the training program of Mercedes.
"I was actually almost the reserve driver for BMW in DTM. I did a test with them and it went incredibly well, and then I was about to sign a contract for a full-time seat in the DTM [for 2017]. By that time I had already accepted that I had no support whatsoever to help me get to Formula 1".
But then...
Luckily Russell got a liberating phone call: "One day I was in the bath and I got a phone call from a Frenchman (Gwen Lagrue) who called... He said to me: 'Hi George... I've just started Mercedes and you're the first one I want to contract."
Since then, George Russell has been working hard to get a seat on a Formula 1 top team. He is mainly seen as the future successor of Valtteri Bottas or Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.