George Russell

Before it was stitched onto a Mercedes, the number 63 was on a rented kart belonging to George Russell's older brother Benjy. Russell took the number, took up the sport at seven in 2006, and within six years had done something no junior karter had ever managed: defending a European championship.

The karting years

The British phase was ruthless. Russell won the Kartmasters British Grand Prix in cadets in 2008, then doubled up in 2009 with both the British Open Championship and the Formula Kart Stars title. In 2010 he moved into Mini Max and took the Super 1 National Championship. Family folklore says his father used to overstate his lap times to goad him into going faster; whatever the method, the results kept arriving.

From 2011 Russell went international in KF3 with the Intrepid factory team, running Intrepid-Vortex machinery alongside team-mates who included Alex Albon and Charles Leclerc. The rookie season was a statement: the CIK-FIA European KF3 Championship won at the first attempt, plus victory at the SKUSA SuperNationals in Las Vegas. Then came the bit nobody had done before. In 2012, across rounds at Varennes and PF International, Russell defended the European junior crown — winning both races at the Brandon finale to seal it — and became the first driver in history to take two consecutive European titles in the junior category. He rounded off his karting days in the senior KF class in 2013, finishing 19th in the world championship before leaving for cars.

What made them different

Preparation. Even as a teenager Russell was famous in the paddock for a work ethic that bordered on obsessive — the driver who treated junior karting like a professional operation while rivals were still treating it like a hobby. The back-to-back European titles are the proof: winning one junior crown can be momentum and machinery; returning as the hunted and doing it again, against a fresh wave of hungry juniors that included the strongest generation in memory, takes method.

He was also a big-occasion driver. The SKUSA SuperNationals is karting's rowdiest one-off — a temporary Las Vegas car park track, huge grids, zero margin — and Russell won it as a European visitor. His junior years were spent trading paint with Leclerc, Albon and Lance Stroll, a cohort that would follow him all the way to Formula 1.

Legacy

Russell's double stands as one of junior karting's cleanest records — a first that can be equalled but never taken. His path is now the case study for British karters aiming at the European junior classes: dominate the national scene first, then arrive in Europe with a factory team and win immediately. The car career delivered on all of it — championship titles up the single-seater ladder, then Formula 1 in 2019 and grand prix wins with Mercedes — but the karting community remembers the essentials: the borrowed number 63, the Intrepid years, and the junior title defence nobody had managed before him. Today's rising juniors chasing the same double know exactly whose record they are measuring against.