Mercedes
Russell ran wide on the outside of Turn 1 and managed to avoid the melee that way, which helped his rise to second on the first lap. After the initial Safety Car came in, he managed to stick within DRS range of Verstappen and made one late lunge down the inside of Verstappen for the lead into Turn 12. But he couldn’t keep his car on track, and Verstappen held the lead. That was his only chance, as the Mercedes man came home a still decent second. Antonelli was left biding his time in P9, and eventually made a move on Bearman. The Haas man went wide and picked up a penalty, which promoted the rookie to P8 at the flag for the final point on offer.
Russell and Antonelli both looked competitive throughout Qualifying, even if the former needed a late effort in Q2 to make it through after running used tyres for his first flying lap. Russell improved one place from Sprint Qualifying with fourth, while Antonelli was also solidly in the top 10.
George Russell, Sprint: 2nd, Qualifying: 4th, 1:32.826
“It is annoying to end the day just 0.026s away from being on the front-row and two positions higher up the grid. P4 is still a solid result but when it is as close as that, you always feel like you could have done just a little bit more. That said, I was happy with my lap. It wasn’t the perfect effort, but I managed to extract a lot of performance from the car and when I crossed the line, I felt that I had done a decent job. Getting P2 would have been a good way to end the day, particularly having finished there in the Sprint this morning, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
“The wind is likely to shift 180 degrees tomorrow which will be interesting. We expect the McLarens and the Red Bull of Verstappen to be particularly quick, but I hope we can be in the mix for the podium. We know we’re in a tight fight for second in the Constructors’ and every point counts. I’m therefore looking forward to the race and seeing what we can do.”
Kimi Antonelli, Sprint: 8th, Qualifying: 7th, 1:33.114
“I was hoping for slightly better than P7 in qualifying today. We couldn’t maximise either lap in Q3 and ended up just the wrong side of a few cars. P5 was definitely possible today if we had managed to put everything together. It was tricky to do that with the change in wind conditions from run to run, particularly at the end of Q2 and into the final segment. It was scrappy and we will work hard to improve on that moving forward.
“With all that said, I am still looking forward to tomorrow. The wind is going to rotate for the race and that will likely affect the balance. Whilst we were trying to optimise the car for qualifying, we made sure that we didn’t do that at the cost of our race car. Our pace in the Sprint looked good so we can hopefully use that tomorrow and gain some positions.”
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“It’s frustrating to end qualifying the wrong side of a tight group of cars with both drivers. For George, he was milliseconds away from getting on to the front-row. His lap was good; we haven’t consistently had the single lap pace to challenge the top two this weekend, so it was a solid effort to be so close. Hopefully we can deploy the handy race pace we saw in FP1 and the Sprint to get in the fight for the podium with him.
“It was also a question of what may have been on Kimi’s side of the garage. His Q2 lap was his best of the session and there was likely more time to be found on his first Q3 lap, which was his fastest of that segment. He may have been able to get ahead of Hamilton and Piastri but he certainly wasn’t the only driver not to hook up his best lap as the wind picked up in the closing stages. From P7, he still has a good chance of moving forward and putting together a solid result.”
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
“Qualifying was certainly a case of what could have been today. Both George and Kimi felt there was more time to find in Q3, albeit marginally in George’s case. In a best-case scenario, we could have been looking at P2 and P5 but instead it is P4 and P7. That highlights just how close the field has become recently and the importance of delivering the maximum at the crucial moments. It is an exciting challenge and tomorrow we can hopefully enjoy another strong race having come through to the podium and double points in this morning’s Sprint.
“From that 19-lap contest, we gathered some useful data on the Medium tyre. There will still be plenty of unknowns though heading into the Grand Prix. The hot weather will make it demanding on the rear tyres and management will be key. We showed solid pace despite pushing hard in the opening laps of the sprint race so we’re hoping that through car performance and strategy we will be able to move forward with both drivers tomorrow.”
