It took more than one offer for Mercedes to snap up Russell

George Russell has been part of Mercedes' junior program since 2017, but rival BMW wouldn't have been too far off the mark if they'd snapped up the talented Briton. Russell reveals this in the podcast of Motorsport Magazine. He states that he initially rejected Mercedes, but after the second approach by the German outlet he decided to accept an offer after all.

Mercedes noticed Russell early on

In 2015, Russell competed for the Carlin team, which was working with Volkswagen at the time. Mercedes already had Russell in its sights and tried to entice him to make a switch.

"But because there wasn’t an opportunity open at PREMA, the next team I would have had to join would be a German team called Mücke Motorsport," Russell said. Russell didn't have such a good feeling about that, especially since it would be his first year in Formula 3. His feeling with the British Carlin was a lot better.

Russell decided to send Wolff an email thanking him for the opportunity. The Austrian F1 team boss responded promptly.

"So he replied back, ‘I think you’re making a wrong decision but let’s stay in touch and let’s see where we go from there.’"

In the end, Russell was right after all as he finished sixth in the final standings and was only ahead of Charles Leclerc in the rookie standings.

BMW wants Russell

Russell's good performance that year (2015) also caught the eye of BMW. Russell could earn a huge amount of money for his age in the DTM. He even tested a DTM car for the team already and he even proved to be faster than one of BMW's factory drivers who was the reference at the time. Russell was about to sign a lucrative contract, but the Mercedes option came up again.

Russell was in the bath when he received a call from Gwen Lagrue, Mercedes' development advisor. He was being pressured into talks with Mercedes. If he signed with BMW, there would be no future opportunities with Mercedes. However, the point was that Mercedes said, there is a chance we may not end up choosing you, but there is also a chance that we will. BMW, however, wanted clarity from Russell before Mercedes would finally speak up.

Risk

With the certainty that he could start earning a sky-high salary at BMW, Russell had to make a choice. At Mercedes, there was a chance for Formula One, at BMW there was not. That was what was decisive. "I was a 17 year old and you had to take that risk. I guess if it didn’t work out I’d potentially be regretting it, but it worked out.”