Russell almost missed a coveted spot. "No support whatsoever."

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.

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.