George Russell attributes his pole position at the Canadian Grand Prix largely to insights gained from Lewis Hamilton’s practice data. It was a moment of triumph for Mercedes, marking their first pole since last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
During the final practice session in Montreal, Lewis Hamilton showcased impressive pace, finishing nearly four-tenths ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Russell. This performance caught Russell’s attention, compelling him to scrutinize Hamilton’s data.
Russell admitted, ‘This morning Lewis was absolutely flying and he was well ahead of me. I had to look a lot into his data to try to understand what he was doing differently. And, to be honest, that helped me a huge amount.’
Feeling grateful for the hard work put into the qualifying sessions, Russell mentioned, ‘So ahead of this qualifying, I’m just so glad that we could pull it off because I feel like we really deserve all of this hard work we’ve been putting in, and the car has been feeling awesome this weekend.’
Mercedes introduced a new front wing to improve the car’s balance between high- and low-speed corners, a change that appears to have paid off. This pole position is a significant morale boost for the team, which has struggled with the new generation of ground-effect cars.
Russell commented, ‘Such a buzz. It’s been a while since we’ve experienced this feeling. There’s so much hard work going on behind the scenes back at Brackley and Brixworth, and it’s been a little while to be able to sort of get back in the fight. It almost felt like all of that hard work hasn’t been paying off.’
Delving into the car’s technical challenges, he added, ‘I think we struggled a lot with understeer before. Last year, we had a lot of oversteer, and we’ve sort of been just trying to find the halfway house between what we had last year and what we had this year. And it feels like we’re sort of dialing in that sweet spot right now.’
The pole position was especially dramatic as both Russell and Verstappen set identical times. However, Russell’s lap was registered first, giving him the top spot. Verstappen took the second spot in stride, acknowledging Mercedes’ speed.
Verstappen reflected, ‘Probably Q3 was the weakest of the sessions for Mercedes, so being on the exact same lap time, it’s great. In hindsight, I think, when you look at their pure pace, I take second, because after Q2 I saw their lap times and I was like, there is no way that I can do something like that.’
He noted that despite minor issues throughout the weekend, his team managed to find a decent balance for qualifying. ‘Of course there was a little bit of rain in between, like a few spits here and there, but I think overall just the weekend was, again, a bit messy from our side, just too many little issues. From there onwards we tried to, of course, find the best possible balance with the car. I think we did get a decent balance in qualifying, and I was quite happy with it, but just we need to be able to just have cleaner weekends without issues, and that will help a bit as well,’ said Verstappen.
The collaborative spirit within Mercedes and the technical advancements in their cars clearly contributed to Russell’s pole position. Hamilton’s data played a crucial role, underscoring the importance of teamwork in such a competitive sport. Both Russell and Mercedes are riding high on this achievement, looking forward to the race with renewed confidence.
Source: Motorsport
