George Russell's mid-season struggle against Lewis Hamilton questioned by F1 pundit as the Mercedes driver's form comes under the scanner

F1 journalist Peter Windsor feels that George Russell has been failing to challenge teammate Lewis Hamilton in recent races the way he was doing earlier, pointing at an apparent drop in his performance.

In the 2022 season, Russell became one of the handful of drivers who defeated Lewis Hamilton as his teammate and this was especially impressive since it was his first season with Mercedes. The team had dropped down on performance and Hamilton was affected the most. However, this season, Hamilton seems to have caught on the grip with the W14, outperforming Russell.

Analysing George Russell's performance in Belgium on his YouTube video, Windsor mentioned that even though the race was going fine from his perspective (drawing this conclusion from his radio messages), he has been rather down in comparison to Hamilton.

"Everything was kind of very nice over the radio, and everything was classic George, but he just doesn’t look like the George that’s been giving Lewis so much trouble certainly at the start of the year and last year," Peter Windsor said.

He feels that this has given a better opportunity to Lewis Hamilton because it will make it slightly easier to focus on other things during a race. He finished P4 in the race and Russell was down at P6.

"Lewis must be feeling more confident now as a result of that," Windsor said.

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Former F1 driver believes Lewis Hamilton will not leave Mercedes

The contract deal between the seven-time world champion and his team has been under speculation. His current contract gives him a seat with Mercedes till the end of the 2023 season and although there have been talks about the signing of an extension of the same, there has been no official information.

David Coulthard, however, is sure that Lewis Hamilton will be signing an extension with the team despite the time it is taking. As he told The Irish News, Hamilton would only part ways with the Brackley-based outfit if there is a major 'fallout,' which wouldn't happen under current circumstances.

"I don’t think there is any realistic chance that Lewis will leave Mercedes unless there is a major fallout," Coulthard said.

Mercedes has been upgrading to challenge other teams for the world championship, but while Red Bull dominates this season, they can only have their expectations up for the upcoming seasons of Formula 1.