Has Lewis Hamilton dominated George Russell this season?

The Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell is arguably one of, if not the best driver line-ups in F1. On one side we have a legitimate icon of the sport in Hamilton who is the most successful driver in the history of the sport. On the other side, we have Russell, a young driver who is making his mark at one of the best teams in F1.

The 2022 F1 season was the first time Russell and Hamilton were teamed up at Mercedes. By the end of the season, there was hardly anyone that Russell had not impressed. He outscored Hamilton in his first season as a teammate, got the team's sole pole position, and won in Brazil - doing all of that in his first try.

The second season with the duo paired together shows a very strange story at the moment. After 17 races this season with only five left, George Russell has been completely outscored and in the eyes of many, outperformed by Lewis Hamilton. While Hamilton has managed five podiums and scored 194 points, Russell only has a podium to his name and is 62 points behind his teammate.

Looking at these numbers, my first reaction like everyone else's is that Russell has been dominated by Hamilton. However, at the same time, in our cumulative driver ratings (average of driver ratings after every race) both Mercedes drivers are level at 7.38 points.

It was at this point that I thought it made sense that we dug deeper into the data to reach a better conclusion. In this feature, this is precisely what we're going to do. So let's dig deeper into the data and see what it reveals.

Lewis Hamilton vs George Russell: How have they fared?

Qualifying

Head to head: 11-9 (George Russell)

Average gap: .004s (Lewis Hamilton)

First of all, taking a look at all the qualifying sessions, including the sprint shootouts, what we can see is that George Russell nicks Lewis Hamilton by 11-9. However, if look at the average gap between the two drivers, it is Hamilton who is ahead by a minuscule margin of .004 seconds.

What we can see here is that both the drivers are neck and neck in qualifying and there's nothing to choose between the two.

Race

Head to head: 10-7 (Lewis Hamilton)

The race head-to-head that we've used here is from the driver ratings that we give after every Grand Prix. As a refresher, you can take a look at the table below for the driver rating for each race in the table below.

Driver Ratings over the first 17 races

Looking at the driver ratings for each race, we can see that it is 10-7 in Lewis Hamilton's favor. The reason why the two have similar overall ratings is because extremes when it comes to having bad races and good races tend to have a bigger impact.

For instance, George Russell has five races with a rating below 7 while Hamilton has six races in the same category.

On the other hand, while Russell has four races with a rating of nine or above, Hamilton has had two of them. In the end, all of this averages out to the same number.

Bad Luck/Reliability:

The other factor that could be addressed here is the impact of reliability and bad luck in races. While George Russell himself has been a bit error-prone this season, he's made mistakes in Canada, and in Singapore, there have been races where he has been a bit unlucky as well.

He lost out on a P2 finish in Australia due to reliability and bad luck. He lost out on another podium in Silverstone as well due to safety car timings. He was also a bit unlucky to suffer a DNF in Zandvoort in what was a racing incident.

You take these races into account and you see a situation where the imposing 62 points deficit looks much smaller and the podium tally also improves.

Conclusion

When we look at these numbers, we see a pair of drivers that are closely matched against each other. In terms of qualifying, there's nothing that separates the two. Even in the races the 10-7 margin in favor of Lewis Hamilton is impressive but the overall driver rating is still the same over the season.

If we have to pick a driver that has been better of the two, it's hard to argue against Hamilton being the one. However, can we justifiably claim that George Russell has been dominated by his teammate? That's a bit of a leap in terms of judgment and does not hold true.