George Russell recalls the ‘most horrifying incident’ he’s ever witnessed from inside an F1 car

Follow us on Google Discover

George Russell has recalled the ‘most horrifying incident’ he has ever witnessed from inside an F1 car during his eight-year-long career in the sport.

It is absolutely no secret that motorsport is one of, if not the, most dangerous forms of sport in the world. Even with the introduction of various innovations to improve safety in Formula 1, travelling upwards of 220mph still carries a massive amount of risk.

Despite spending less than a decade in the category so far, George Russell has seen his fair share of scary moments behind the wheel of an F1 car.

During his sophomore season of racing in 2020, Russell had a front row seat to the horrors of the sport as he watched Romain Grosjean’s Haas F1 car burst into flames after crashing into the barriers at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix.

However, in order to find the most ‘horrifying’ thing that the six-time Grand Prix winner has seen in F1, we would have to fast-forward two years to his debut season with the works Mercedes team in 2022.

• READ MORE: George Russell’s former race engineer reveals how he proved everyone wrong after joining Mercedes

George Russell says Zhou Guanyu’s 2022 British GP is the ‘most horrifying incident’ he has ever seen in F1

During a recent interview with F1.com, Russell recounted the biggest moments of his career following his 100th race with the Mercedes F1 outfit at last weekend’s Barcelona Grand Prix.

In just his tenth race as a Silver Arrow, at the 2022 British Grand Prix, he would witness Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu fly through the gravel, over the tyre barriers and into the catch fences after colliding with him at turn one.

It was a scary moment for everyone in attendance, with the atmosphere at Silverstone going flat until the Chinese driver emerged unscathed after what felt like a lifetime of marshals trying to get him out of the trapped F1 car.

“I remember I made a really bad start,” Russell recalled. “I was the only driver with the hard tyre starting the race, came off the line, wheels spinning, all the drivers zooming by me… I hit Zhou, and the next thing he’s spinning around and cartwheeling through the gravel.

“It was probably the most horrifying incident I’d ever seen from the cockpit.

“I saw he was stuck behind the barriers, so it was a split… I think the racing instinct in me was like, ‘I need to carry on here’, and then I guess the human side came in.

• READ MORE: George Russell sends Zhou Guanyu a four-word message after his Sauber exit is confirmed

“It kind of felt like life or death at that moment. I couldn’t imagine what he must have felt. I knew what I had to do.”

Russell parked his car in the run-off area on the outside of turn one and attempted to aid the marshal’s attempts to get Zhou out of the car as soon as they possibly could.

Despite requesting the trackside marshals not to touch his car, Russell was deemed to have received external assistance by race control. He was, rather unfortunately, unable to take part in the rest of the race following the resumption of racing conditions.