George Russell revealed that seeking professional advice greatly helped him to stabilize his mental health coming into the 2021 season, saying it allowed him to “come back stronger.”
The young Williams driver endured, as would every other driver, many obstacles, challenges, and disheartening moments over his three-year career in Formula 1 thus far. After coming away from his first two seasons with Williams with no points, he finally collected some in 2020 when he replaced the COVID-ridden Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes at the Sakhir Grand Prix. However, Russell admitted that the little success he was able to find over the past few seasons hurt him. The Briton revealed his conflict with his mental health and that he saw a psychologist help him get back on track.
When Russell participated with Mercedes at the Sakhir Grand Prix last year, he was looking set to take his first victory as well as his first point in F1, before the win was cruelly snatched from him due to rare mistakes from Mercedes and tire drama. Russell was “gutted”, but he also saw that race as something to learn from.
“If I want to win races and championships, I can’t let those difficult moments dwell on me,” he explained. “I qualified second in the Sakhir Grand Prix. And I was disappointed. My best qualifying position until that point was P12, which I was ecstatic about, and then I’d just qualified second, and I was disappointed.
“And that also taught me that fighting for championships and victories in the future is going to be mentally much tougher than what I had to endure finishing at the back of the grid for the last two years.
“So those experiences have been a blessing in disguise, I think in the long term, 10, 15 years I’ll look back and I’ll say, ‘I wouldn’t change any of those for the world.”
