George Russell on how Alonso’s words helped him

George Russell, participating in the Beyond the Grid podcast of the championship’s official website, told how Fernando Alonso’s words once helped him rebuild psychologically and enjoy his work and life in general .

George Russell: “When young people ask me what advice I can give them, I answer: “Don’t be afraid to fail.” Only through failure, through overcoming difficulties, did I learn to deal with such moments when I was very young.

At that time my career was going well, I became British Formula 4 champion, then won titles in the GP3 series and Formula 2, but at the same time it happened more than once that I made mistakes, had accidents and then it seemed to me that I had abandoned many people.

After the recent crash in Singapore on Sunday evening, I received a call from Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ chief racing engineer, who said: ‘George, the only reason we had a chance to fight for the win this weekend was because of your excellent qualifying . performance and then excellent race pace on the Grand Prix circuit.

Thanks to you, the team felt what it was like to fight for victories again. This is what you need to remember, and you need to forget the little mistake you made and move on.

His words immediately after that race really encouraged me. We did everything we could at the time, and then what happened happened, but now it’s in the past and we move on. We had the chance to fight for the win then, we tried to take advantage of that, but I hope I get such opportunities this year.

You know, not so long ago I was listening to a podcast where Fernando Alonso was participating, and he said that if he wanted to change something in his career, he would want to get more enjoyment out of his work all at once.

I think these words resonated with me: I participate in Formula 1, I do what I dreamed of, I give myself completely to my work, I am a true professional, I try to pay attention to all the nuances, but sometimes forget to enjoy everything.

You should like to communicate with the people around you, experience joy when visiting different countries of the world, try to smile more often and not try to pretend all the time that you are an absolutely serious man.

This does not mean that I have become less professional in my work, but I now manage to get more pleasure out of life.”