Russell bounces back to beat Antonelli in sprint qualifying
Mercedes' British driver George Russell (Andrej Ivanov) George Russell bounced back on Friday to claim pole position in qualifying for Saturday’s sprint race at the Canadian Grand Prix ahead of championship leader and Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli. The 28-year-old Briton had been outpaced earlier by the Italian teenager who is seeking a fourth consecutive Grand Prix win on Sunday, but proved he retains the resilience and pace to handle mounting pressure. Russell topped the times in 1min 12.
965sec to beat Antonelli by 0. 068sec in a tight session extended by a lengthy red flag stoppage after two-time champion Fernando Alonso crashed in his Aston Martin. "It feels great after a tough Miami, but I never doubted myself," said Russell.
"I knew what I could do. Miami was a bit unique, but it’s high grip here and it feels like you're driving a proper F1 car around here, which is how it should be. "The upgrades are definitely feeling great, the team have done such a great job to bring this forward.
We saw in Miami that McLaren are close and Ferrari are not too far behind, and on a track like this it's really excelling. " Antonelli said: "My lap was quite bad and the session wasn’t clean for me – I made a mistake and I pushed for lap one when I’d not done enough prep for the tyres and they were cold... We will do better tomorrow.
" World champion Lando Norris was third ahead of McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri and the Ferraris of seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar qualified seventh and eighth for Red Bull with Racing Bulls’ rookie Arvid Lindblad ninth and Carlos Sainz 10th for Williams. The SQ1 session began with Hamilton leading the way in warmer temperatures of 20 (air) and 42 (track), the seven-time Canada winner clocking 1:15.