Over the years much has been written about ex-F1 driver Jos Verstappen and how he parented his son Max to become a ruthless winning machine. The now infamous ‘Gas Station Story’ is an example of Verstappen’s tough training regime, when Max was just fourteen.
After a mistake which cost Max a win, Jos allegedly abandoned him at a gas station on the way home as punishment, forcing him to wait alone until Jos came back later. Both father and son have spoken about this incident – Jos saying it was to “teach Max a lesson,” and Max saying it was one of the turning points in his mental toughness.
“He made me very strong mentally, and he pushed me to the limit every single time,” Max has said. “At the time it was tough, but now I understand why he did it.” Yet Max was not the only current F1 driver to be beasted by his father, as George Russell reveals on the ‘untapped’ podcast.
Russell felt “confusion”
Mercedes driver George Russell has revealed the deep sense of “confusion” he felt as a young racer under the demanding eye of his father Steve, following news that he has repaid the £1.5 million his parents invested to fund his early career.
The repayment marks a full-circle moment for Russell, whose father Steve famously sold his seed and pulse business to bankroll his son’s path through karting and junior single-seaters. Without that sacrifice, Russell admits, his Formula 1 dream would have been impossible.
Now, with four F1 victories to his name — including a breakthrough win this season for Mercedes at the Canadian Grand Prix in June — and a new multi-year Mercedes deal on the horizon, Russell has looked back on the sacrifices and the sometimes brutal methods that shaped him.
Steve gave George misleading lap times
The Mercedes driver reveals: “I didn’t know any different, to be honest, because I jumped in and I was winning races and I was fast,” Russell said. “I probably didn’t know because my father was so hard on me. I always felt that I wasn’t good enough for my father.” During his karting days George raced at karting circuits, where data and live lap times weren’t available. Instead, his dad stood by the track with a stopwatch — and deliberately manipulated the numbers.
“When I used to do go-karting, at the time, there was no real data analysis. We didn’t even have lap times on practice days. It was literally my father with a stopwatch. And I learned after about five years that he would always time me late, so my lap times looked slower than reality. He would tell me the lap times of the other drivers on practice days and I always thought I was slow.”
When Russell then went racing and he regularly found himself on pole and inning races, something which “confused him” due to his slow practice sessions. Eventually, Russell recognised that the deception was a deliberate psychological tool. “I realised over time that he would always do that just so I didn’t get too full of myself or overly confident, and that was such an amazing, important lesson for me.”
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George felt he’d let his dad down
The stopwatches and tough love was only part of the story. Russell also revealed the sacrifices his father made with time and energy — working long days before spending weekends criss-crossing the UK in a van with his young son. “He’d leave before I woke up to go to school, wouldn’t be back until eight or nine in the evening and I’d already be in bed. So I wouldn’t see my father during the week. We’d then jump in the van on a Friday night and go up and down the country.”
If the race weekend didn’t go well, George admits his father would be “screaming and shouting” so as a young kid he was left to think: “I don’t see my father. And when I do see him, he’s upset with me and I feel like I’m letting him down.’ That was really tough.”
Yet it was later in his career when Russell was to fully appreciate his fathers contribution to his racing ambitions. “But it’s only when I was about 17 years old that I recognised, not just the financial investment, which is one thing, but the investment in time that he put into me.
Passing through baton to Mercedes
“He had to work his ass off to give me that opportunity. And then whenever he had a spare moment, he was taking me here, there, and everywhere. I can only imagine the pressure and stress he must have been under himself. Ultimately, those years from the age of seven to 13 shaped me as a person and I have him to thank for that.”
When Russell joined the Mercedes junior programme as a teenager, it was a natural moment for his father to step back from the day-to-day grind of managing his son’s career. That transition, Russell says, brought a welcome new chapter to their relationship. “It was only when I signed with Mercedes at 17 that it almost looked like he was handing the baton over.”
George’s parents attend a number of race weekends a year, but he notes they are never seen in the garages peering at timing screens and lap time analysis, but keep themselves to themselves:
“They don’t want to take any spotlight or presence or interviews. They just want to be there as my parents,” revealed Russell.
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Now Steve is just a father
Today, Russell insists, the relationship is stronger than ever. Gone is the tension of childhood misunderstandings; in its place is gratitude for the sacrifices that made his journey possible.
“It’s much better. And he’s there as a father as opposed to, at the time, being a mentor, a mechanic, the driver up and down the country, the investor. He was everything.”
As Russell prepares to sign a new ‘multi-year deal’ with Mercedes, his story of hardship, sacrifice, and eventual repayment underlines how much unseen effort lies behind every F1 driver’s career.
From manipulated lap times to £1.5m debts, the lessons Russell absorbed in his formative years continue to shape him. His father’s relentless pressure once left him confused and doubting his own ability — but in the end, it forged the resilience that now makes him one of the sport’s brightest stars.
Carlos Sainz breaks silence on F1’s 2026 ‘Tech Overload’
Carlos Sainz was ruthless booted from his Ferrari seat this season, to make way for seven times champion Lewis Hamilton. With more than half the season complete, the Spaniard may be quietly smiling to himself given the difficulties Hamilton has found adjusting to his new team, after a record breaking partnership between him and the Mercedes team.
Yet the switch for Carlos has been no walk in the park in particular he has found the Mercedes power unit significantly different for the one he was used to in Maranello. “Definitely the thing you feel the most when you change teams, the moment there’s a power unit involved, it’s the power unit,” Sainz told assembled media in Monaco.
“The way the power unit operates in terms of switches, especially nowadays in Formula 1 with so much going on on our steering wheels, with the deployment, the battery, things like this, procedures, safety procedures of the engine and the power unit, it’s all definitely the biggest change that I’m having to adapt so far in Williams,”reported the Spaniard….. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
