George Russell took pole position for the Canadian Formula 1 GP, but revealed that changes made by Mercedes almost cost the result. The Brit explained that the team altered the car’s behavior thinking about the rain forecast for Sunday’s GP, which left the W17 ‘out of tune’ during the qualifying session.
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The Mercedes driver secured his fourth consecutive pole at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, beating teammate Kimi Antonelli by just 0.068 seconds. The result came just hours after Russell won the Sprint race held in Montreal.
The decisive session did not start smoothly for the Brit. Russell made a small mistake on his first attempt in Q3 and had no time recorded, increasing the pressure for the final lap.
Even so, the driver managed to react on the last run to the track and found enough pace to secure pole: “That last lap came out of nowhere. It’s an incredible feeling when you manage to put everything together in such a challenging session,” he said.
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Russell explained that Mercedes made adjustments after the Sprint, and indicated that the team will still need to evaluate if they made the right decision: “We made some changes. As a team, we need to review if this was the right direction,” he said.
According to the Brit, the adjustment was directly related to the rain forecast for Sunday in Canada: “Based on the forecast for tomorrow, that may have hurt us a bit today. The car was a bit out of tune,” he added.
The Brit also acknowledged that Antonelli was more competitive during the qualifying session: “Kimi was definitely more competitive than me in the session, and we weren’t as far ahead of the others as yesterday,” Russell concluded, who also revealed he has already spoken with his teammate after the intense duel between the two in the Sprint race.
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