The Mercedes team asked George Russell to rank all circuits for the 2023 season and split them into four categories: “Top Level”, “Excellent”, “Good” and “So-so”.
A video was made of how he does this, with George laying out the circuit diagrams on a special table, not always attributing them to a specific group: for example, he placed the Montreal Circuit named after Gilles Villeneuve somewhere in the middle between excellent and good tracks . By the way, like the Albert Park in Melbourne.
He awarded the highest marks to Imola, as well as the track in Jeddah, emphasizing that flying there is a great feeling. Zandvoort, where the Dutch Grand Prix takes place, he first wanted to place on the border of this category and the next, ie “Excellent”, but then changed his mind and also attributed it to the highest category.
The same rating went to Interlagos, where he took his first win last year, Silverstone, Suzuka and Spa.
Hungary’s Hungaroring Russell ranked excellent tracks – for speed and organic configuration, as well as the Texas Circuit of the Americas. This category includes an urban circuit in Singapore, a fairly new Formula 1 circuit in Qatar and the good old Monza.
But the Catalan ring, where the Spanish Grand Prix takes place, was rated “good” by the Mercedes driver. In the same group he ranked the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain’s Sakhir and the circuit in Miami. According to him, everything is fine there, except for the last sector, which is narrow and winding.
Unlucky Mexican autodrome named after the Rodriguez brothers. Of him, George said this: “I like the Mexican crowd, I like the city of Mexico City, but I can’t call the track one of my favorites.” Then I placed the thumbnail diagram at the very bottom of the table.
He also sent the Baku circuit there, about which he said the following: “Maybe Baku is the best track on the calendar to race, but in terms of drivers it’s not the most interesting track in the world, so I’ll put it in the column “So-so”. Sorry Baku!
It’s funny that George didn’t immediately recognize the track in Monaco, but only when he turned the map over as he usually looks at the diagram, then placed it on the border between the two top categories and explained that the track itself is beautiful, but it was too hard to drive there.
Since no one has raced in Las Vegas yet, it was hard for Russell to say anything specific, but looking at her schedule, he rated her as follows: “Maybe she’s closer to So-so than the top tier.”
But he described the Austrian Red Bull Ring in the most original way: “Just because of the name, it must be attributed to the “so-so” group!
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
