19-year-old George Russell offers glimpse of Britain's Formula 1 future after Lewis Hamilton

The teenager made his official F1 debut driving a Force India in first practice

Russell drove Sergio Perez's car on Friday (Getty)

Lewis Hamilton was rightly acknowledged as the driver of the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday, but November 10, 2017 may yet come to be remembered as much for an event that occurred on Friday morning.

That was when a 19-year-old teenager called George Russell from made his official F1 debut driving a Force India during the first practice session.

Russell, from King’s Lynn, won the GP3 championship this year, two steps from F1, and is a Mercedes junior driver. He’s good-looking, articulate, professional and savvy, but not so blasé about life that he won’t admit to feeling the odd thrill when he takes a step back to appreciate how lucky he is to hang out watching Moto GP races with an F1 legend such as Niki Lauda, Mercedes’ non-executive chairman.

However you slice it, Russell got the job done in Interlagos. He’d never seen the circuit before apart from in a simulator, and he wasn’t familiar with the Force India VJM10. But you wouldn’t have known any of that from his performance on Friday morning.

In Sergio Perez’s car, against the continuingly impressive Esteban Ocon, a fellow Mercedes Junior driver, he looked completely comfortable. No locked wheels or big sideways twitches. Just smooth, smooth progress. After the usual bit of aerodynamic testing, he got down to work on a set of soft-compound Pirellis. As Ocon lapped in 1m 11.045s, Russell worked down to 12.340s in three laps.

On the faster supersoft tyres Ocon posted 1m 10.454s for ninth, as Russell used a similar set for 1m 11.047s. It was, by any standard, an impressive performance.

Was he surprised, or satisfied?

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he admitted. “I hadn’t seen the circuit or the car before, and this was a big step up, so I’d say I was quite satisfied with my performance.

“We started off doing the usual aero running, then they gave me three push laps on a set of soft tyres. On the supersofts your quickest lap comes on the first or the second here, so I only really had four proper laps overall. So I thought that a gap of six-tenths was quite respectable.”

He indulges in typical British understatement, this young racer. He says he lost the time to Ocon in the two high-speed corners.

“I left a margin because I was still learning the track and the car,” he explained. “Interlagos has a lot of undulations and blind corners, so it was a little difficult to get my rhythm. But I learned a lot, and there were a lot of positives.”

To be honest, there weren’t any real negatives. “No, not really. I came into the session naturally wanting to do a good job, but I had excuses, I suppose, the not knowing the track or the car. But I’m not a driver who looks for excuses.”

He will drive again for the team in Abu Dhabi, a track he knows well and in a car in which he has now done 12 laps. He believes he will go quicker still there.

The 19-year-old won the GP3 championship last year (Getty)

He says that he didn’t really feel any pressure this weekend.

“I don’t see it like that. I knew what the car could do. I’d watched videos of the Force India in action and I’d seen the telemetry.

“You hit 330 kmh heading into Turn 1, and brake in 65 metres. I knew that was possible, so I just had to get that into my psyche. In the GP3 car it would probably have been 270 km/h and 100 metres, but in the F1 you just have to do it, and not brake until you get to 65 metres. You have to brake when you are 35 metres later and going 50 km/h faster…”

He did that each lap, without making any mistakes. Again, the word impressive sprang to mind. Mercedes chief Toto Wolff certainly thought so.

“New car and new circuit and within a few tenths of Esteban,” he said. “That was a really strong first showing.”

Meanwhile fellow rising Briton Lando Norris, this year’s European F3 champion, has announced that he will graduate to Formula 2 in Abu Dhabi in readiness for his racing campaign in 2018. A McLaren Young Driver who will conduct an official McLaren tyre test here today (Monday) prior to the Macau F3 GP next weekend, and is due to race alongside Fernando Alonso in the Daytona 24 Hours next January, the 18 year-old from Bristol starred in the F1 test after the Hungarian Grand Prix when he set the second fastest time to Sebastian Vettel.

Lando Norris will compete in Formula 2 next year (Getty)

“Having won the FIA Formula 3 European Championship at my first attempt this year, I will either step up to Formula 2 or Super Formula in 2018 towards my goal of one day racing in Formula 1,” he said. “To get the opportunity to contest the last two races of this year’s F2 season is therefore a bonus whichever category I ultimately chose. It’ll be the first time I’ve ever competed in a race that includes a compulsory pit-stop and so this will also be a new experience for me.

“I’ll be signing off from F3 this weekend, and it would be great to go back to Macau and win – it would be an awesome end to what’s already been an amazing year. But it’ll be tough as in addition to the high-class field and the nature of the uncompromising track, I’m missing practice which isn’t ideal. But Macau is a race I really want to go back and do with the Carlin guys – even with that disadvantage.”

While Hamilton continues to reach his peak and to be the standard setter, with his fourth world championship just won, the young lions who may replace eventually him as Britain’s leading representatives have begun to stake convincing claims to seats alongside him in the sport’s highest echelon.