Lewis Hamilton plans next daring activity for George Russell after Mercedes duo go surfing

Lewis Hamilton has pledged to convince his Mercedes team-mate, George Russell, to go sky diving after the pair spent the day surfing together in Australia. It was all smiles for the Silver Arrows partnership after a promising race weekend, despite the performance issues that have marred the start of this season.

Voices from the Mercedes camp have been broadly negative in 2022, but as the season progresses it seems as though it is not all doom and gloom. Both drivers have finished all three races so far, and the team’s solid reliability has translated to points on the board. 

Russell shared a photo on social media that showed himself and Hamilton after taking advantage of the conditions to go surfing in Melbourne, adding: “Think I’ll stick to four wheels.” Hamilton posted a similar update with the promise of more white-knuckle activities to come, captioned: “Next up: getting George Russell to skydive.”

Russell jokingly added: “Not going tandem with you though… [laughing emoji].” Team boss Toto Wolff may hold his breath at the sight of his talented drivers jumping out of a plane, but it is nothing the seven-time world champion hasn’t done before as he recently posted footage of a skydiving session in Bahrain.

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It seems that the pair have found positivity in the Silver Arrows’ latest showing in Australia, where Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc achieved the Grand Slam of pole position, fastest lap, race winner and leading every lap. Russell took the chequered flag to earn his first podium as a Mercedes driver, and Hamilton came home fourth. 

A consistent but underwhelming first few weeks since stepping up from Williams has surprisingly left Russell second in the Drivers’ Championship after three races. Hamilton is down in fifth, but he remains above his bitter rival from last season, Max Verstappen, who has been forced to retire in two races thus far. 

“I believe in my team back in base to be able to bring more performance but it’s going to take a lot of time. But for the time being let’s keep capitalising. We’ve got to be proud about this because we’re sitting P2 in both championships.

“This weekend we were the fifth-fastest team, we were slower than McLaren and Alpine and obviously Ferrari and Red Bull too. We know there’s potential in the car and we have a lot of work to do to extract that performance. It won’t happen overnight or in the next race but I do think in time we’ll get there. For the time being, if we get these results, it’s keeping us in the mix.”