George Russell - A Local Superstar in the Making

I don't know how many of you have heard of George Russell, but this local lad has the makings of being a true international superstar.  Now you probably may be thinking what does he do.  A singer or actor or possibly even a footballer?

George who lives in Tydd St. Giles is a 13 year old schoolboy at Wisbech Grammar School & he is a world class Karter.

The local paper did a story on his recent exploits but I feel they totally underplayed the story (unusual in a newspaper I know) not even putting it on the back page when it should have been lead story on the front page.  I'll put this down to a lack of knowledge of Karting & motorsport in general.

By any measure George is exceptional.  He has won nine major championships around the world, the latest being the Supernationals in Las Vegas last week.  This event is seen as being the American championships & in drawing over 500 racers across the classes, this years event was almost certainly the biggest Karting event in history.  Winning the event was not what made it special though it was the manner in which he prevailed.  Starting from the back of the field due to an untimely engine failure & an administrative/proceedural mix-up, George preceeded to dominate the event culminating in winning the grand final in an unprecedented manner.

This is not what is making the motorsport world sit up & take notice though.  George is currently European KF3 champion.  In Karting the European Championships are the strongest by a distance with Karters from all over the world & they are arguably more important & have a stronger entry than the World Championships.  For example, Ayrton Senna was European Kart Champion but never World Champion.

To the uninitiated, Karting might be seen as a childs pursuit or equated to the local bus garage where people can go to race there mates, but top level Karting is a very, very serious matter where to be competitive budgets for tyres & engines alone can stretch into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.  The top boys are regarded as heroes & can drive as professionals, paid from the age of 11.  That George is at the top of this tree is something that we should all be very proud of.

Reading about the manner of his victory in Las Vegas bought to mind personal comparisons with Lewis Hamilton.  In the mid 90's I worked in the motorsport industry with special emphasis on Karting.  Lewis Hamilton, who was 9 or ten at the time was sponsored by my company & I went to his parents house in Stevenage to deliver some Data Acquisition & telemetry equipment & then met up with him & his father Anthony one wet weekend at Kimbolton to show them how to set it up & use the software.  That weekend I saw Lewis lap the entire field in a 10 or 12 lap race & anyone who watched that knew he was something extraordinary & I can draw the same comparison with George's recent efforts & I am surely not the only one.  I havent' yet met George or seen him race but I intend to rectify that as soon as possible next season & I urge anyone with an interest in motorsport to do the same because excellence of this kind is few & far between.

George has a long way to go to fulfill his potential needing a blend of luck, skill, support, advice & most pertinently money to get to his awoved goal of F1 & I will be keeping a keen eye out for him.  Wisbech doesn't & hasn't produced many international superstars....George could be the first!