George Russell had a rather painful race at the Sakhir Grand Prix. He had the race win within his grasp through the first half of the race. Unfortunately, the second half kept throwing miseries toward Russell to an extent where he couldn’t catch a break and ultimately limped home in P9.

However, regardless of where he finished in the race, Mercedes were fairly impressed by Russell’s overall weekend with the team. He proved to be great in terms of adaptability, as he needed just three sessions to give his teammate a hard fight, both in qualifying and in the race.

However, it wasn’t his adaptability that impressed Mercedes. Apparently, the Silver Arrows were quite astonished by something that Russell managed to showcase.

How did George Russell impress Mercedes?

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ track engineer director, opened up on what aspect of Russell’s race managed to grab Mercedes’ attention. Apparently, it was his attacking nature that gave the Silver Arrows glimmer of hope that he is worthy enough to drive for them in the future.

“That’s the hardest thing you can really predict how he will advance,” he said. “But that was very impressive. He really attacked.”

A race win would have been an incredible tale to tell for Russell. Unfortunately, it never turned out that way for the rising star. Nevertheless, he did enough from his side to prove that he is a championship-material.

He was self-confident and disciplined: Shovlin

Russell showed a very calm figure through Friday. He never showed any intentions of aiming for the timesheet during practice sessions.

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He took his time, got up to speed, and drastically closed in on his teammate over the weekend. By the time he reached race-day, he was already lapping faster than Bottas. Shovlin acknowledged the same and felt that Russell approached each of his runs efficiently.

“The risk,” Shovlin said. “If this is an opportunity to show what you can do in a fast car – is that it is so easy to make mistakes. He obviously thought about it for a second.”

“He attacked, he was self-confident and disciplined, he approached every run methodically.”

With the weekend in Bahrain, Russell gave more than enough reasons to why he could be the right successor for Lewis or Bottas. So, the Russell signing is coming at some point, but how far away is the deal from happening?