George Russell has beaten his former teammate Lewis Hamilton by six and a half hundredths of a second to secure pole position for the Barcelona – Catalunya Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver set 14.679 on the final runs as he tried to fight back against his teammate Kimi Antonelli, who was a quarter of a second further behind.
Russell just edged out the Ferrari as he bounced back after his teammates’ domination and bad luck so far this season to take his x pole. The Englishman has failed to score in the last two Grands Prix, but so far this weekend, he has topped two of the three practice sessions, which has led to Antonelli having a sixty-eight-point lead at the quarter-way mark.
Hamilton split the two Mercedes as his Ferrari teammate Leclerc crashed and didn’t complete a lap in Q3, leaving him tenth. Hamilton was just six and a half hundredths off pole as he searched for his first Grand Prix pole since 2023. Hamilton had been on the back foot all weekend after missing the first practice session to allow development driver Dino Beganovic a run.
Hamilton’s lap denies Antonelli his seventh Grand Prix front row since the start of the season. Russell had appeared the favourite for pole ahead of Antonelli, although it was Ferrari, and not Friday pacesetters McLaren, who emerged as Mercedes’ closest challengers for it.
Russell, who takes pole position for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix: “It’s been a great weekend so far – I kind of feel like my old self again, where every lap I’m doing the job, fighting for the top positions. Obviously, the last few races, for numerous reasons, haven’t been on our side but I came in this weekend with a clean slate, felt good and it’s great to be on pole.”
Hamilton added, “All weekend we’ve been four tenths off, even with the upgrade that’s where we thought we were. For us to be that close, less than a tenth between us, that’s a real showing of the hard work of everyone at the factory so big thank you to everyone in Maranello.”
“We’ve just got to keep pushing, keep developing and I’m hoping tomorrow we can squeeze something more out of this and keep up with [Mercedes] for once.”
Antonelli, who starts third, “It’s been a little bit of a difficult weekend so far for me. I didn’t really have the feeling with the car. The long run was strong yesterday, so that’s a positive, but today, I’ve been lacking a little bit. But looking forward to tomorrow.”
Early on in Q1, Hamilton started to make Mercedes listen as he topped Q1 and then his teammate Charles Leclerc in Q2.
But on the first attempt, going through Repsol (Turn Four), Leclerc lost control as he went across to the outside line and the car slithered straight into a heavy impact nose-first crash with the tyre barriers. The subsequent red flag brought a pause to proceedings, with McLaren’s Piastri and Red Bull’s Verstappen the only drivers at the time with Q3 laps on the board.
Leclerc told Sky Sports, “”I just feel very much ashamed to be here after a crash like that. What did I do? I released the brakes and I tried to carry speed. I think we were close to being the fastest car, apart from Turn Four.”
“I knew it was a weakness, I knew I had to make everything perfect for the lap, and I tried. I obviously regret it and again, very much ashamed. The last two races, Canada and Monaco, have been in a very tricky configuration, and that didn’t make it easy.”
The final session resumed with just over eight minutes left, just enough time for two runs depending on the remaining soft-tyre allocation. Russell and Hamilton both chose that approach, with the former getting inside Piastri’s benchmark to hold provisional pole.
On the second run, Antonelli briefly usurped Russell to head the timesheet, but the Briton was going significantly faster behind on the road and ended up lapping three tenths faster before Hamilton gave his former team a major fright and split them with the final lap of the hour.
Antonelli, another driver to miss first practice, has trailed Russell in every session since his return and starts off the front row for the first time this season.
he admitted, “It’s been a little bit of a difficult weekend so far. I didn’t really have the feeling with the car. The long run was strong yesterday but today I’ve been lacking a little bit, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
Lando Norris put his McLaren fourth as the world champion went two hundredths faster than the Red Bulls. But like Hamilton, the current world champion, was compromised on his first attempt when his teammate crashed and brought out the red flag in Q3. McLaren had looked likely to be Mercedes’ closest challengers through practice, but their challenge faded in qualifying.
Max Verstappen, on the weekend which marks a decade since his first win on debut for Red Bull, was two thousandths behind Norris as he out-qualified teammate Isack Hadjar by half a tenth. Oscar Piastri put his McLaren just under a hundredth and a half behind the Frenchman as he went nearly half a second faster than Liam Lawson, with Nico Hulkenberg slowest in Q3 and ahead of Leclerc.
Arvid Lindblad was the fastest of those knocked out in Q2, the Racing Bulls driver missing out on the final session by almost a tenth and three-quarters. The English-Swedish driver struggled to convert his strong pace in practice, perhaps because he reported a deployment issue.
Lindblad was over a tenth and a half faster than Gabriel Bortoletto, the Brazilian ahead of both Alpine drivers. Franco Colapinto outqualified teammate Pierre Gasly by seven hundredths, the fifth time in six qualifying or sprint qualifying sessions. Ollie Bearman was comfortably a second and a half ahead of Carlos Sainz.
Their respective teammates Esteban Ocon and Alex Albon were fastest of those knocked out in Q1, Ocon missing out by just under two tenths as he went three and a half tenths faster than Albon.
Sergio Perez was two tenths faster than his Cadillac teammate Valtteri Bottas, while the Aston Martins were completing the field. However, for the first time this season, Lance Stroll out-qualified Aston Martin teammate Fernando Alonso after going just under six hundredths faster.
