George Russell has beaten his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli by nearly three tenths to take pole for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. The Englishman unleashed the expected pace of the silver arrows to set an 18.518 going ahead of his Italian teammate and creating a seven-tenths advantage over the Red Bull of Isack Hadjar.
Russell topped all three segments and led team-mate Kimi Antonelli by three tenths in Q3. Russell looked imperious throughout Saturday, while Antonelli went into qualifying on the back foot after a heavy crash during FP3, leaving Mercedes working against time to get his car ready for qualifying. There was also a team error in sending him out for the final session with both cooling fans still in his sidepods.
The sidepod fell out at the first corner and then shattered after being hit by Lando Norris, resulting in a red flag. But after looking erratic in his driving for most of the session, Antonelli composed himself for his final run and put the car where it deserved to be on the front row.
Antonelli avoided a grid penalty, but Mercedes were fined €7,500 (£6,500) for releasing their car in unsafe conditions during Q3.
Hadjar put his Red Bull third, the French-Algerian half a second behind the Mercedes duo as he seeks to put right his crash on the formation lap last year and start his first race in Albert Park. One of the surprises of the session as he out-qualified both Ferrari’s and Oscar Piastri; he was a quarter of a tenth ahead of teammate Lando Norris.
Hadjar delivered for Red Bull right away, unlike many of his predecessors, Max Verstappen made a rare mistake at Turn One, locking his rear axle. He went on a one-way ticket to the barriers and out of qualifying, on his first flying lap. Hadjar was two hundredths faster than the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.
Explaining what happened, Verstappen said “I have no idea (what happened). I just arrived to Turn One and the rear axle just completely locked up out of the blue while hitting the pedal, so this is something very weird that I’ve never experienced in F1 before. So just need to understand what went wrong.
Russell said, “A lot of simple things in the past, like race starts and pit stops, are a hell of a lot more challenging with these new cars. I said: ‘Let’s just have a clean session because who knows what’s going to happen to tomorrow.’ But we’re in the best place we can be.”
Ferrari appeared in testing and practice to have decent pace, but when it came to the first time of mattering, he was eight tenths off the outright pace. Oscar Piastri put his McLaren nearly a tenth faster than teammate Lando Norris, but the world champion complained about deployment issues. Lewis Hamilton completed the top four teams; he was three thousandths behind Norris, with just under a second covering the top eight.
Liam Lawson put his Racing Bull eighth best of the rest, going just under a quarter of a tenth behind the Ferrari as he outqualified new teammate Arvid Lindblad by half a second, with four of the six British-born drivers making it into Q3.
Lindblad made an impressive start to his F1 career, but a final lap that did not live up to the standards he had set until then in the weekend left him behind Racing Bulls team-mate Liam Lawson in ninth place.
He said, “All weekend we have been quite competitive. I was trying to not get too excited after yesterday because we didn’t know if other teams had more in the pocket but I kind of knew we’re fast and I just needed to focus on my job.”
Gabriel Bortoleto made it into Q3 but failed to set a time after breaking down in the pit lane. Bortoleto had gone eight hundredths faster than his Audi teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, to secure his place in the top ten.
An impressive result in the German brand’s first qualifying as they returned to Grand Prix racing for the first time since 1939, as well as building their own power unit.
Ollie Bearman put his Haas twelfth as he went a hundredth faster than his teammate Esteban Ocon. Pierre Gasly was comfortably over four tenths faster than Alex Albon, the Williams driver split the two Alpine’s as he went over three tenths faster than Franco Colapinto.
There was some minor respite for Aston Martin amid their nightmare start to the season, with Fernando Alonso at least finishing in seventeenth ahead of both of the cars of newcomers Cadillac. Though they halved their deficit, they were still two and a half seconds off the pace.
Alonso’s teammate, Lance Stroll, was unable to participate due to an issue with the team’s hugely troublesome Honda power units, while Williams’s Carlos Sainz also failed to feature after suffering a technical problem in final practice.
Valtteri Bottas put his Cadillac half a second faster than teammate Sergio Perez they were the final drivers to qualify.
