In October 2015, Russell drove a Formula One car for the first time, when he tested the
McLaren MP4-26 at
Silverstone as a prize for winning the 2014
Autosport BRDC Award. After he joined the
Mercedes Junior Team, Mercedes gave him more testing opportunities. He drove a Mercedes for the first time in April 2017, testing the 2015
Mercedes W06 at
Portimão. He then conducted formal test drives for Mercedes (2017 and 2018) and
Force India-Mercedes (2018). Russell made his Grand Prix weekend debut at the end of the 2017 season, driving for Force India during free practice at the
Brazilian and
Abu Dhabi Grands Prix. Mercedes promoted him to first-team reserve driver in 2018.
Williams (2019–2021) In October 2018, Mercedes arranged for Russell to make his Formula One debut with engine customer
Williams-Mercedes. Russell had previously applied for a Williams drive after winning the 2017 GP3 title, but Williams's
Paddy Lowe was unmoved by his new PowerPoint presentation and Russell went to Formula 2. Russell signed a three-year contract with Williams but remained a Mercedes test driver. He was partnered by
Robert Kubica for the
2019 season and
Nicholas Latifi in
2020 and
2021. His first appearance for Williams was at the 2018 post-season test at
Yas Marina Circuit, driving the
FW41. Russell's years at Williams were difficult. Mercedes had hoped that Williams would field a competitive car; as Russell later noted, Williams had finished no worse than fifth in the constructors' standings from to . and did not produce a car that could reliably compete for points until 2021, Russell's final year with the team. The team was so strapped for cash that it considered replacing Russell with
Kevin Magnussen after the 2020 season if Magnussen could find enough sponsor money to keep the team afloat. Due to Russell's extended run at Williams, he is third on the list of
most race starts in a career before scoring points, with 37. However, the Formula One team principals viewed his performances more favorably. In 2020, a year where Russell scored only three points and finished 18th in the standings, the team principals ranked him that year's sixth-best driver. In addition, Russell led Williams back to respectability in 2021, scoring 16 points and recording a rare podium for Williams.
2019–2020: Rookie season and first points , where he finished 11th In 2019, Williams struggled for form. At Russell's Formula One race debut, the , Russell qualified 19th and finished 16th. He acknowledged that his experience was difficult, remarking that the car was "four seconds off the pace" and that he was lapped multiple times. Williams's slow pace continued into the season, and in most races Kubica was Russell's only on-track competition: Russell did not finish ahead of a car from another team until round six, the . He also outqualified Kubica at all twenty-one races. Russell's best placement was 11th at the rain-affected , where Williams rolled out an upgrade, six cars retired without classifying, and another two cars received time penalties after the race. He came close to finishing tenth, but unsuccessfully asked to pit for slick tyres during a safety car and ran wide on turn two several laps later, allowing Kubica to overtake him and score the team's only point that year. Russell also finished 12th at the after a late safety car allowed him to unlap himself, missing out on points by 1.668 seconds. He finished 20th in the Drivers' Championship, scoring no points to Kubica's one. Russell later remarked that as a competitor, it was hard for him to watch fellow rookies
Alex Albon and
Lando Norris competing for points and podiums after beating them the year before in F2. However, Russell came close to scoring on several occasions, such as the (starting 11th but falling to 16th after running into the gravel during a re-start lap) the (finishing 12th), the (reaching 9th at one point before dropping back to 11th), and the (crashing out from tenth place under safety car conditions). Russell scored his first points at the , following a surprise promotion to the Mercedes senior team when
Lewis Hamilton tested positive for
COVID-19. His performance at Sakhir was widely acclaimed by both Mercedes and the media. He narrowly missed out on pole position, overtook teammate
Valtteri Bottas at the first corner, and led the majority of the race. However, he was forced to pit twice in-a-row when the Mercedes pit crew accidentally fitted Bottas's front tyres on his car, following a radio failure. He overtook Bottas a second time, recovered to second place, and was closing in on race leader
Sergio Pérez, when a puncture forced him to pit again with ten laps to go. He finished ninth, picking up two points for the finish and one point for the fastest lap. He later remarked that while "I was the same driver [in Sakhir] as I had been before ... I was exactly the same driver a week later [driving for Williams at the season-ending ] when I was out in Q1." In Abu Dhabi, he donned a special helmet to honor the Williams family, who had sold the team in October. He finished 18th in the Drivers' Championship, scoring three points, all for Mercedes. Russell initially blamed the incident on Bottas, walking over to Bottas after the crash and slapping his helmet (Bottas responded with a middle finger), and accusing him of "trying to kill [them] both". However, Russell later retracted his claims and apologised to Bottas and Williams. Mercedes boss
Toto Wolff acknowledged that Bottas should not have been side by side with a Williams in the first place, but reserved the bulk of his criticism for Russell, a Mercedes junior who had just taken out a Mercedes. Both drivers sought to downplay the dispute, at least publicly, after Bottas rejoined Mercedes in .. He finished 11th, but received praise from Fernando Alonso for his performance. Despite his DNF at Imola, Russell helped Williams to its best season in several years. He came close to scoring points at a number of races, including the (gearbox failure following a restart in 15th place); the (rising from 19th to 12th without help from driver retirements); the (hydraulic failure after qualifying in 10th); and the (12th place). At the , Russell qualified in 8th place, Williams's highest grid position since 2017. He was still in 10th near the end of the race, but after a fourteen-lap defensive battle,
Fernando Alonso passed him with three laps to go. After the race, Alonso consoled Russell with a hug. Russell scored his first points for Williams two races later at the , moving from 17th on the grid to eighth. Following the race, Mercedes agreed to promote Russell to the senior team for the 2022 season. In the very next race, Russell collected his maiden podium at the under unusual circumstances. He qualified in second after a rain-affected Saturday, the first front-row start for Williams since the
2017 Italian Grand Prix. The downpour continued into race day, so the race director ran the race for two laps under safety car conditions before calling it off, handing Russell his first Formula One podium finish. It was Williams's only podium finish between the
2017 and
2025 Azerbaijan Grands Prix. Russell also scored points at the (ninth) and the (tenth, after qualifying in third). He placed 15th in the Drivers' Championship, scoring 16 points to Latifi's seven. From 2022 to 2024, he was paired with seven-time World Drivers' Champion
Lewis Hamilton. The team placed third in 2022, second in 2023, and fourth in 2024.
2022–2023: Maiden win and pole position The timing of Russell's move to Mercedes was unfortunate, as it coincided with a regulations change that ended Mercedes's dominance of the sport. Mercedes's new aerodynamics concept performed very well in simulations but was difficult to drive in real life. The team scored one victory in two years. Russell and Hamilton spent the first nine races of the 2022 season testing experimental parts for the Mercedes car. Although the drivers swapped testing duties every race, Russell accumulated a 34-point lead over Hamilton after round nine, which team boss
Toto Wolff attributed to Hamilton's experiments backfiring. After round nine, Russell and Hamilton finished out the season essentially level on points, with Russell scoring one more point than his teammate. his first pole position at
Hungary; and his first Grand Prix and sprint race victories at
Interlagos. He finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship, outscoring teammate Hamilton by 35 points. was another difficult year for Mercedes and for Russell in particular. After some promising performances at the start of the season (leading the until an untimely red flag and scoring a podium at
Barcelona), Russell's results declined in the second half of the season for a variety of reasons, including a record seven pit stops in one race (
Zandvoort), an accidental last-lap crash (
Singapore), an over-aggressive strategy call (
Suzuka), and Hamilton colliding into him after a front-row start (
Lusail). Russell salvaged a measure of pride with a third-place finish at the , which clinched second place in the Constructors' Championship for Mercedes. He finished eighth in the Drivers' Championship, the lowest for a Mercedes driver since , and 59 points behind Hamilton. After the Abu Dhabi race, Russell commented that he had "let the side down a couple of times this year", but that it meant "a huge amount" to help the team finish second. Although he called his own season "a complete disaster",
2024: Final year with Hamilton , where he took his second career win. For the
2024 season, Mercedes fundamentally changed its design concept. The new
Mercedes W15 was fast but inconsistent, hard on tyres, and difficult to set up properly. Although the team was not competitive until midseason, Russell commented that the staff was "making progress" behind the scenes. At round three, the , Russell crashed heavily while trying to overtake Fernando Alonso (who received a 20-second penalty for brake-checking Russell) for sixth place on the penultimate lap. The accident left him immobile and defenceless behind a 250 km/h blind turn for ten seconds before the race director deployed the virtual safety car. However, he emerged unscathed and met with Alonso to smooth things over. Following the race, he called for automated safety cars to prevent similar incidents. At midseason, Mercedes scored podium finishes in six consecutive races. Russell reeled off some of his best results in years, including a pole and podium in
Montreal, his second career race victory at
Spielberg (albeit after the first two drivers collided in front of him), a pole at
Silverstone (followed by a mechanical retirement), and the first Formula One race win (at
Spa) lost to a post-race disqualification since
1994, for which the team took responsibility. However, the media opined that he could have won the Canadian Grand Prix. Russell dominated the , qualifying on pole and leading 49 of 50 laps to take his third career victory. Russell again qualified on pole in
Qatar after
Max Verstappen was handed a grid penalty for driving unnecessarily slowly ahead of Russell, who was on an out-lap. Verstappen condemned Russell's appeals to the stewards for his penalty, stating he "lost all respect" for him, and warned Russell that he would overtake him at any cost—Russell claimed he said he would 'put him in the wall', which Verstappen denied. Verstappen overtook him into turn one, with Russell finishing fourth after two safety car periods. Russell finished sixth in the Drivers' Championship, 22 points ahead of Hamilton. The team fell from second place to fourth in the Constructors' Championship, but scored four wins, quadrupling its total from the prior two seasons. Russell outscored Hamilton in two out of three seasons, recorded three wins to Hamilton's two, and outqualified Hamilton 39–29, while Hamilton scored 20 podiums to Russell's 14 and beat Russell on total points (697–695) after overtaking Russell on the final lap of his
final race with Mercedes. After the 2024 season ended, Russell said that he "learned so much from [Hamilton] as a driver and a person,"
2025: Contract year in .|alt=Russell driving the Mercedes W16 at the 2025 Japanese Grand Prix In , Russell faced a
contract year. He also received a new teammate, eighteen-year-old academy driver
Kimi Antonelli, who was hyped as "F1's next big thing." Defending World Constructors' Champions
McLaren were heavily favoured to claim both titles, and did. At the start of the season, Russell opined that the
MCL39 was fast enough to win every Grand Prix. McLaren dismissed Russell's prediction as hyperbolic, but it proceeded to dominate the constructors' race with seven 1–2 finishes and 12 wins in the first 18 races. In addition, McLaren's
Lando Norris was crowned Drivers' Champion at the
final race of the season. In Australia, he raced conservatively in intermittently rainy conditions and inherited third place when
Oscar Piastri went off track. At Shanghai, Russell qualified second for the main race, splitting the two McLarens; strong teamwork from McLaren allowed Lando Norris to pass him at turn one, and Russell finished third. Russell bounced back in Bahrain: he fended off Norris in the closing laps to finish second—overcoming faulty brakes and electronics—and received widespread praise from the racing press for his adaptive performance. Struggling with tyre overheating, Mercedes laboured to fifth- and sixth-place finishes in
Jeddah. At Miami, Russell was out-qualified by Antonelli for the first time, before an unconventional decision to start the Grand Prix on hard tyres was rewarded with a near-free
pit stop under
virtual safety car conditions, helping him finish third. Mercedes began testing major upgrades during the Imola-Monaco-Barcelona tripleheader, but the team generally lacked the pace to compete for wins. The
Mercedes W16's new suspension was particularly enigmatic: introduced at Imola, it was withdrawn after one middling race. The team reintroduced it at Montreal three rounds later, and Russell controlled the race from start to finish, picking up his maiden Formula One
hat-trick (taking pole, winning, and setting the fastest lap). However, the improvement quickly faded, and at
Spa-Francorchamps, Russell noted that the temperamental W16 was struggling even in relatively favorable conditions. Mercedes reverted to the older suspension at
Hungary one round later, and Russell scored a podium after hunting down
Charles Leclerc, whose car was dramatically fading. Aside from those two podiums, Russell's next-best finish was a chaotic fourth-place at
Barcelona where he qualified fourth, lost two places at the start, undercut
Lewis Hamilton, passed fourth-placed
Max Verstappen in the closing laps after a safety car restart, and was hit by Verstappen on track near the end of the race, for which the Dutchman expressed regret. Verstappen received a time penalty for hitting Russell, which cost him nine championship points. Ironically, after a late-season charge, Verstappen closed most of the gap to Lando Norris in the Drivers' Championship, but lost the title by two points. Following the summer break, Russell finished fifth at
Monza. He then scored his seventh podium of the season at
Baku with a second-place finish, having struggled with a respiratory illness all weekend. The next round at
Singapore, Russell surprised commentators by taking pole by 0.182 seconds on a track where Mercedes was not expected to be competitive. After Verstappen (who started second) unsuccessfully gambled on used soft tyres at the start, Russell got out to a large lead and cruised to victory. The team's focus shifted to 2026, and Russell scored one podium in the final six races, at
Las Vegas, where he dealt with steering and tyre issues. It was his career-best ninth podium of the season. Russell finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship with 319 points, 169 ahead of Antonelli. Mercedes returned to second in the Drivers' Championship. At the end of the season,
Autosport ranked Russell the second-best driver in motorsport, between Verstappen and
Álex Palou.
The Daily Telegraph,
The Race,
The Athletic, and
Autoevolution ranked Russell the second-best driver in Formula One, in each case behind Verstappen and ahead of title-winner Norris. In Formula One's official polls, the team principals ranked him fourth and the drivers ranked him third.
Motor Sport ranked him fifth, although its writers considered slotting him ahead of Norris and Piastri.
2026: Title contender at the
2026 Chinese Grand Prix Heading into a major regulation change, pundits and bookies predicted that Mercedes would have a strong season. Russell sought to manage expectations, arguing that it was too soon to tell which team would be the best. His Mercedes deal automatically extends to 2027 if he meets undisclosed performance benchmarks. Mercedes announced itself as a title contender at the season-opening , where Russell claimed the Drivers' Championship lead for the first time in his career. Russell took pole, three-tenths of a second over teammate Antonelli and eight-tenths of a second over third-placed
Isack Hadjar, a margin
Autosport called "staggering." He won the race after an extended battle with
Ferrari's
Charles Leclerc in the opening laps. Russell claimed the net lead when Mercedes pitted under
virtual safety car on lap 12 and Ferrari stayed out, gambling for a second safety car later in the race. That gamble failed, so Russell and Antonelli nursed their tyres for 46 laps and cruised to a
1–2 finish. The pattern repeated at round two in
Shanghai. At the sprint race, Russell and Ferrari's
Lewis Hamilton traded the lead six times in the first five laps before Hamilton's tyres faded. At the feature race, Russell started second after technical issues in qualifying. He spent much of the race in traffic with the Ferraris, and finished second. Polesitter Antonelli eventually reached clear air and won comfortably. After a snakebit weekend at
Suzuka marred by setup and electronic issues and an ill-timed pit stop, Russell found himself nine points adrift of Antonelli in the standings. At the
Miami Grand Prix, he placed fourth in both the sprint race and the main race, putting him twenty points behind Antonelli. == Driver profile ==