Watching him put the McLaren on the front row for the Austrian Grand Prix last year with a lap that perfectly balanced aggression and control, during which he was audacious in how he was using the potentially crash-inducing exit kerbs of the penultimate corner to actually help halt the slide which had allowed him his crazy-high entry speed was to see a magician of car control at work.
The way that Russell, as a stand-in for an unwell Hamilton at Sakhir, breezed into the Mercedes team and out-performed Valtteri Bottas with no previous experience of the car and which didn’t even fit him properly was deeply impressive. He potentially had the race won twice, but each time it was taken from him by events outside his control. It was also significant that his drive included a super-aggressive but perfectly-judged pass on Bottas in his recovery drive. A team error in the pits ultimately finished-off his prospects of winning a race which a puncture had already made more difficult but from which he’d looked fully capable of recovering.
It was cruel luck but it was a performance which made it inevitable that he’d be moved into the senior team on a full-time basis as soon as everyone’s contracts lined up. If that meant his Williams season of last year was just treading water in an uncompetitive car waiting for the big break, he didn’t treat it like that. Putting what was the eighth/ninth-fastest of the 10 cars on the grid on the front row of a wet Spa (faster than both Mercs) was an astonishing achievement, a modern day F1 miracle. Qualifying it third at a wet Sochi wasn’t far behind.
If the McLaren can just bridge that small gap to the front and Mercedes delivers the calibre of car that’s expected of them, in Norris and Russell we have two guys who seem certain to deliver those overdue victories. But that’s just the foundation level. They have not only each other to compete against but Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc too. Watching them find their place in such heady company is going to be one of the great fascinations of F1 this year.