Fernando Alonso has predicted that George Russell will make it tough for Lewis Hamilton next year and will push him at Mercedes but he might have to bide his time before he is able to regularly beat the current champion.

Full focus remains on 2021 and the title battle that is raging on but the 2022 season is not that far away now and earlier this week we learned the full identity of the grid with Guanyu Zhou announced as the second Alfa Romeo driver.

Indeed, he's partnering Valtteri Bottas there, with George Russell replacing the Finn at Mercedes for next year and many are looking forward to seeing how the current Williams star goes about taking on his new illustrious teammate in a championship challenging car.

Alonso is already a self-proclaimed fan of Russell and expects him to do well in the sport, tipping him as a future champion, but he has said more recently that it might take a little while for him to start regularly beating Hamilton, given the size of that particular task:

“In those two years when I watched the races [in Alonso's sabbatical], what George achieved with Williams – even if he was not in the headlights – was very impressive,” said Alonso to the PA news agency.

“But in terms of beating Lewis, I don’t know how it will work.

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“Even if George has been impressive, Lewis is the legend, a great champion and it is never going to be easy to beat him. It doesn’t matter how talented you are.

“For sure, it will be closer than it has been with Valtteri, but Lewis will be the main preference in the early part of the championship for Mercedes, no doubt.”

It will obviously be hard for George to immediately take the fight to Lewis but we know he has the ability and the pace to deliver in such equipment, you only need to look back at the Sakhir Grand Prix in 2020 for evidence of that.

Certainly, it's going to be an exciting dynamic watching the pair and they'll hope they can continue Mercedes' reign at the front.