George Russell surprised by Qatar Sprint Qualifying pace after securing impressive P2

George Russell was left surprised with his second place in Sprint Qualifying ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix, claiming performances over one lap “haven’t been great recently”.

The Mercedes driver put in a strong performance on Friday, setting a time good enough to split poleman Oscar Piastri and McLaren team mate Lando Norris on the grid for Saturday’s 19-lap Sprint.

Mercedes require a strong result this weekend to secure second in the Teams’ Championship, as they sit 40 and and 53 points ahead of Red Bull and Ferrari respectively.

“It’s just nice, my Qualifying hasn’t been great recently, bar Singapore,” said Russell.

“For a while I haven’t had a good session so I was pretty happy to get good laps under my belt and I was always sort of there or thereabouts throughout the session, so that was nice.

“This track is such a joy to driver around. It’s so quick, the grip is so high, it feels nice.”

With the Lusail International Circuit consisting of medium- and high-speed corners, overtaking has proved difficult in the past, leading Russell to suggest the order will most likely stay the same after the opening corners in Saturday’s race.

“I don’t want to put a downer on it but Turn 1 is probably going to be where we end up really,” he said.

“We briefly spoke about it this morning in the Drivers’ Briefing about why the DRS hasn’t been extended and I hope maybe after the Sprint they can adjust it if needed for the race, but it’s going to be very challenging to overtake but obviously we’re in a good starting position. We’ll take it.”

Team mate Kimi Antonelli, meanwhile, was left in P7 having just squeezed through to SQ3 after Isack Hadjar was stripped of his final lap time due to track limits.

The young Italian had made a small mistake on his own lap, which in turn meant he lost confidence in the final segment of Sprint Qualifying.

“Was a bit of a messy Qualifying on my side. I had a pretty big moment in SQ2 and kind of lost a little bit of confidence,” he said.

“Just didn’t maximise the grip today, the potential was very high. I found myself always one step behind so just need to work into the data to understand and in order to be quicker tomorrow.”