Outside Line: The Clock Starts Now for Russell

Congratulations, George Russell.

However you cut it, making it to Formula 1 is no easy feat, and one the 19-year-old should be immensely proud of. He's certainly worked very hard to get there, and as the 2018 F2 champion-apparent, is as deserving of his promotion of any young driver. That said, it's only set to get harder from here on out. Much,

much harder.

As much success as Russell has enjoyed so far, and as talented as he clearly is, his move to Williams means his each and every move will be under a much brighter spotlight, all with the ultimate goal of a race seat at Mercedes still a significant way off – and an awful lot of competition for it.

About to win his fifth world championship, Lewis Hamilton doesn't look like he's going anywhere, while Toto Wolff seems committed to Valtteri Bottas as a second driver. Even in the event one (or both) leaves, he'll have not just fellow Mercedes junior Esteban Ocon to contend with, but a host of outside drivers, starting with Max Verstappen – who is out-of-contract at the end of the 2020 season.

With that in mind, Russell needs to not just beat out whomever Williams places across from him (most likely Sergey Sirotkin or Robert Kubica), but he has to impress enough beyond that to catapult himself to the top of Mercedes' wish-list for the senior team, otherwise he could find himself supplanted by the next young hot-shot who comes along – just like Pascal Wehrlein.

Indeed, it was only a month ago that we saw how things can turn for a Mercedes young driver, with Wehrlein being jettisoned despite a largely positive stint in F1 where he was his team's only point-scorer in each of his two seasons.

Unfortunately for Wehrlein, he was deemed "not ready" for a promotion when Nico Rosberg left at the end of 2016, his replacement Valtteri Bottas did nothing to lose the job in the following year, Esteban Ocon was equally as impressive at Force India while being two years younger, and

Certainly you could argue Russell is better positioned than Ocon for an eventual senior-team drive, given the Frenchman is yet to find a seat for 2019, and might be forced to spend a year on sabbatical, but if like Wehrlein the schedule of turnover doesn't quite match up, he could be similarly out of luck. Bottas is only 29, Hamilton 33 (and could easily do a "Kimi" and stick around into his 40's), while Wolff already has his next zygote seemingly lined-up in 11-year-old(!) Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who might better fit his timeline.

Of course, it’s not like Mercedes are the only team on the grid, but there's no denying they're the most desirable, at least for the immediate future. If Russell wants to be part of that future, he needs to be very impressive, very quickly, beyond anything Wehrlein or Ocon have done so far. Is he up to the challenge? I guess we're about to find out.