Formula One - Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team, 2026 Canadian GP. George Russell
Front row lock-out for Saturday Sprint
- George Russell will line up on pole position for tomorrow’s Sprint in Canada with team-mate Kimi Antonelli just behind in P2.
- Friday’s FP1 session saw the team’s first major update package of the season hit the track.
- A busy hour, with several red flag periods, saw the team work through its usual set-up and data gathering efforts along with ensuring the upgrades were working as expected.
- Kimi topped the times in practice from George, with both drivers enjoying a healthy advantage over the rest of the field.
- That was likely due to other teams not optimising their own laps and a much more competitive Sprint Qualifying session was expected.
- That proved to be the case and whilst Kimi topped SQ1 and George both SQ2 and SQ3, the challenge came from both McLaren and Ferrari.
- Both drivers improved on their final efforts in the session and that was needed to lock-out the front row; George 0.068s quicker than his team-mate to take pole.
Driver | FP1 | SQ1 | SQ2 | SQ3 | |||
George Russell | P2 | 6 Laps | P8 | 7 Laps | P1 | 6 Laps | P1 |
1:14.772 | Medium | 1:13.026 | Medium | 1:12.965 | Soft | ||
Kimi Antonelli | P1 | 6 Laps | P2 | 5 Laps | P3 | 5 Laps | P2 |
1:14.010 | Medium | 1:13.551 | Medium | 1:13.033 | Soft | ||
George Russell
We’re pleased to get pole for tomorrow’s Sprint, but we know it’s only a very small part of this weekend’s job. We’ve brought a large upgrade package here and it’s good to see it performing well from the off. We were put under pressure by both McLaren and Ferrari today though and we know they will be hot on our heels across Saturday and Sunday.
One of our major weaknesses so far this year have been our starts. We have focused on improving them and we have the chance in the Sprint to show that we have made progress. If we don’t get off the line well, we know that our competitors will take their chance. We will do our homework overnight and hopefully we can carry our confidence and momentum from today into the rest of the weekend.
Kimi Antonelli
My Sprint Qualifying session wasn’t particularly clean. I made a mistake in SQ2 and ran through the grass; that threw me off a little bit. In SQ3, I decided not to do a prep lap, and the tyres were a little cold on my first effort. My second lap was faster, but it still wasn’t great. P2 is still a solid result though and I am sure we will make a better go of it tomorrow.
We’ve brought a sizeable update here and we need to understand more about it. It’s clearly got good potential, and we’ve seen some of that already. It’s given us an edge here today in Montreal but I’m sure the rest of the weekend will be very competitive with several other teams in the mix. Let’s see what we can do in tomorrow’s Sprint and go from there.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
It's been a solid start to the weekend and it’s nice to finish the day with Sprint pole and a front row lock-out. We had the update kit on from the start of FP1 and so far, that seems to be performing in line with expectation. The pace in that first session was encouraging, especially on the Soft tyre but we were still struggling to generate enough tyre temperature to get the maximum grip. In Qualifying, as we expected, our competitors moved towards us; a gap of 0.3s to your nearest challenger is usually quite good around a short track like this but Lewis (Hamilton) was very strong in the first half of the lap, so there is clearly something to understand there as the final gap may not have been fully representative.
It's going to be interesting to see how the car performs on a long run in the Sprint tomorrow. As races, they are normally good for information gathering but conditions on Sunday look cooler and possibly wet, so we'll have to consider that in any further set-up tuning that we do ahead of Qualifying.
