As the lead driver for one of the most prestigious teams in the world of motorsport, George Russell is used to drawing a crowd wherever he goes, but the IWC Schaffhausen booth at Watches & Wonders Geneva is one of the few places on the planet where he can move around relatively unnoticed. It’s not that there aren’t any F1 junkies in the building — the sport’s profile has never been higher — rather, it’s that IWC has just unveiled a raft of new timepieces, including the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive, its first watch designed for spaceflight, and they tend to overshadow the human celebrities in the building.
Russell isn’t here to talk about racing, though. Instead, he’s in Geneva representing IWC, the Swiss luxury watchmaker that has backed the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team for more than a decade. Russell has been with Mercedes since 2022, but following the departure of former teammate Lewis Hamilton, he’s taken over as both de facto team leader and chief IWC ambassador.
“When the opportunity came about last year to design my own piece, I was blown away, and I’m really pleased with how it came out.”George Russell
Among Russell’s first official acts was co-designing two limited-edition Pilot’s Watches, a chronograph and a three-hand automatic, built on the 41 mm Pilot’s Watch platform and released earlier this year. Both watches are executed in black zirconium oxide ceramic, one of the more prestigious materials in IWC’s palette, and are accented with Russell’s signature shade of electric blue. Engraved with the number 63 on each caseback — his racing number since his karting days — and limited to 1,063 pieces each, Russell’s first co-signed IWC marks his official arrival to the top tier of F1 stardom.
“It was a real privilege to have that opportunity. Being from the countryside in England, it wasn’t really something I would have ever thought of or was even on my radar,” he says. “But when the opportunity came about last year to design my own piece, I was blown away, and I’m really pleased with how it came out.”
In a sport ruled by oversized egos, Russell is a surprisingly low-key presence, having traded his Mercedes-AMG jumpsuit for a blue suede Brunello Cucinelli jacket, a blue t-shirt, and a pair of crisp white trousers. On his wrist, instead of his own IWC collab, he’s wearing IWC’s new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Le Petit Prince, a perfect complement to his outfit thanks to its bright white ceramic case and deep blue sunray dial. “I’ve always liked the white Pilot’s Watch, and this midnight blue dial is really quite something,” he says. “It wears really well.”
The new ceramic Pilot’s Watch Chronograph is one of nine additions to the brand’s Le Petit Prince collection, a series launched in 2006 and dedicated to the celebrated novel of the same name by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A pioneering aviator who flew airmail between France and Senegal in the 1920s, Saint-Exupéry’s airborne adventures would go on to provide a rich source of inspiration for his writing, as well as for some of IWC’s most distinctive 21st-century pilot’s watches. It’s joined by five new additions to the 1970s-inspired Ingenieur, including the collection’s first-ever tourbillon, and a titanium perpetual calendar.
Like any true watch aficionado, Russell is hard-pressed to pick a favourite. “The Ingenieur in the olive green ceramic with rose gold detailing stands out to me, and without doubt the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive,” he says. “Chris[toph Grainger-Herr], the CEO, showed me a preview of it last year, and seeing it for the first time in the flesh, it’s really beautiful.”
Russell has come a long way from his humble beginnings in King’s Lynn, a sleepy market town in the east of England, where his father sold his agricultural business to finance Russell’s entry into junior karting. The gamble paid off quickly when he won back-to-back Junior European Karting Championships in 2011 and 2012, then worked his way through the British single-seater categories, eventually catching the attention of Mercedes, which signed him to their junior program in 2017. Russell went on to win the GP3 Series that year and the FIA Formula 2 Championship the following season, becoming only the second driver to win both titles in their respective rookie seasons.
Russell made his Formula 1 debut with Williams in 2019, an arrangement that gave Russell race experience and lent Williams the benefits of a factory-approved driver. This, unfortunately, was not enough to rescue the team from a slump that saw it finish last, with a single point, in the year’s Constructors’ Championship. Fortunately for Russell, the team’s loss was the rookie driver’s gain, and his three seasons with Williams are largely remembered for what he managed to do despite the car — including putting Williams on the podium at the Belgian Grand Prix — rather than because of it.
In 2022, Mercedes promoted Russell to the main team alongside Hamilton, and he quickly established himself as worthy of the seat, taking pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix and winning in Brazil, clinching the only Mercedes victory of the season. As Mercedes worked to close the gap to Red Bull and then McLaren in the coming years, Russell would establish himself as a consistent, technically precise driver, taking top podium spots at the Austrian and Las Vegas Grands Prix in 2024. Then, in 2025, with Hamilton driving for Ferrari, he became the team’s senior driver, cementing his place with a decisive win in Singapore, and a contract worth an estimated $50 million per year.
The fans are awesome, [Montreal is] a city I really love, and we get a lot of support there. So I’m really looking forward to going back.”George Russell
He has more than proven his worth so far during the 2026 season, locking in a one-two finish with teammate Kimi Antonelli at the Australian Grand Prix. Similarly strong results at subsequent races in China and Japan have kept Russell and Antonelli at the top of the leaderboard, with a commanding lead over their rivals at McLaren and Ferrari. It’s still early in the season, but it’s hard not to buy into the excitement of Russell leading Mercedes and IWC to its first championship since Lewis Hamilton’s last win in 2020.
“I think IWC and Mercedes have so much in common and so many synergies,” says Russell. “Watches are a very precise high-end technology, and it’s a brand that I’ve grown to love on this journey with them.”
After Russell’s stop in Geneva, the Formula 1 road show will hit Miami, followed by its annual stop at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Russell has had a particularly good run there, with podium finishes the last two years, and a coveted hat-trick (pole, win, and fastest lap) last season. Despite this, he says he doesn’t feel any additional pressure in the lead-up to the race.
“We’ve been on pole there the last two years, and obviously, we won there last year, so of course, we’re looking to replicate that,” he says. “The fans are awesome, it’s a city I really love, and we get a lot of support there. So I’m really looking forward to going back.”
His fans are, too. If his hot streak continues, Russell’s next appearance at Watches & Wonders could be as a world champion, a distinction that might just allow him to outshine the gleaming new releases in the IWC booth. Time will tell.
FEATURE IMAGE: GEORGE RUSSELL. PHOTO BY CHRIS NOLTEKUHLMANN, COURTESY OF IWC.
