Formula 1: George Russell the superior Williams driver despite Robert Kubica’s point

Despite Robert Kubica having scored Williams’ first and only point of the 2019 Formula 1 season, George Russell is the superior driver, and it’s not close.

After neither ROKiT Williams Racing driver, Robert Kubica or rookie George Russell, finished any one of the first 10 races of the 21-race 2019 Formula 1 season in the top 13, the team “broke through” by scoring their first point of the season in the season’s 11th race, the German Grand Prix, at the Hockenheimring.

It was Kubica who scored this point by finishing this rain-shortened 64-lap race around the 16-turn, 2.842-mile (4.574-kilometer) Hockenheimring road course in Am Motodrom, Hockenheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany in 10th place.

But despite the 100% advantage that the 34-year-old Pole now has over his 21-year-old British teammate in the driver standings, the latter has still been the superior driver, and it has not even been close.

More from Formula One

• Formula 1: Top Red Bull threat identified for 2024
• Formula 1: Why the Max Verstappen retirement obsession?
• Formula 1: Williams ‘mistake’ hints Logan Sargeant’s future
• Formula 1 awaiting key confirmation for 2024 season
• Formula 1: The ‘championship’ Max Verstappen only leads by 3 points

As insignificant as being in the top 19 in a 20-driver series seems, I’m not sure there has ever been an instance where the driver standings, the most official form of teammate comparison there is, have reflected something this far off base.

But it was bound to happen.

Before the German Grand Prix, we sarcastically wrote how the only way Williams would score any points this season was if a meteor strike took out 10 cars. Technically, that meteor strike would only need to take out nine cars, as 11 cars in the running would guarantee a top 10 position for Williams assuming both of their FW42s avoided the meteor.

That’s literally what happened at the Hockenheimring, but without the meteor strike.

Five drivers crashed, two were forced to retire with mechanical failures and two had their top eight finishing positions stripped via 30-second time penalties.

As a result, the two Williams drivers finished in 10th and 11th place, effectively by default.

It just so happened that for only the second time this season, Kubica beat Russell when a point, not some random 16th place finish two laps off the lead lap, was at stake.

So despite the fact that he has been outqualified by his rookie teammate 11 times in 11 races and the fact that he has been beaten by him in race themselves on nine occasions thus far in 2019, Kubica is now the only driver in Formula 1 who is shutting out his teammate in the driver standings.

With all due respect to the man who basically performed the impossible feat of scoring a point in the glorified Formula 2 car that Williams are fielding this season, this is laughable.

Compared to Kubica, Russell has been on another level this season. The Mercedes junior driver’s average finishing position is 1.00 higher (15.64 to 16.64) than that of Kubica.

Both drivers have finished every race, making Williams the only team that have had zero retirements through the season’s first 11 races, yet Russell has completed four more laps than Kubica has, as he has finished one lap ahead of him on four occasions this year.

Additionally, his laps led total of 660 out of 676 total laps (97.63%) is the sixth best among all drivers in a car that has no business sniffing the top 18.

Finally, Russell urged Williams for a tire change during the final safety car period in the German Grand Prix, but they rejected it. SportPesa Racing Point’s Lance Stroll, meanwhile, went on that exact strategy and launched himself to the lead from 14th place. He ultimately finished in a season-high fourth.

Russell was running ahead of Stroll before Stroll made his pit stop, so Williams effectively cost the rookie a top five finish by not listening to him.

Robert Kubica may have the advantage over George Russell in the Formula 1 driver standings, and he deserves a lot of credit for doing what literally nobody thought was possible for Williams this season.

But that does not change the fact that Russell has left absolutely no doubt that he is the team’s top driver through his stellar performances throughout the first 11 races of his rookie season.

With all things considered, he was extremely unfortunate that just the second time he lost to Kubica all season happened to be their only battle for one point as opposed to their usual battle, which usually isn’t even a battle, for a top 15 finish or something along those lines.