George Russell has called out Max Verstappen as the driver he’d most like to go head-to-head with this season.

That’s despite fellow countryman Lando Norris entering the season as defending champion.

Speaking this week, he said:“I’d love for it to turn out that way. I do want to go head to head with Max and obviously Lando [Norris] had a great season last year. But no, [being title favourite] doesn’t add any more pressure.

“Probably the fans and people were expecting, you know, to potentially be Mercedes versus McLaren because there was a lot of anticipation that Mercedes would clearly have the best power unit.”