Mercedes Formula 1 junior George Russell dominated Formula 2 qualifying at the Red Bull Ring in Austria to grab a second consecutive pole ahead of McLaren reserve Lando Norris.
After topping the practice timesheet, Russell seized provisional pole in qualifying with his first lap of the session.
On the second lap of the opening run, Russell further reduced the benchmark by a tenth.
Championship leader Norris was 0.3 seconds adrift of the ART Grand Prix driver after the first runs, with the two Brit’s separated by Norris’s Carlin team-mate Sergio Sette Camara in second.
During the second and final runs of the 30-minute session, Russell posted two blistering laps. The first – a 1m13.574s – was 0.3s faster than his previous best.
While this lap was good enough for pole, Russell improved by a further 0.033s on his fourth and final hot lap of the session.
His eventual 1m13.541s was 0.238s faster than Norris, who vaulted Sette Camara in the closing stages to secure a front row.
Norris threatened to improve further on his final lap of the session, setting a personal best in the middle sector before running off-track at the high-speed Turn 9 towards the end of the lap.
Sette Camara was 0.044s adrift of Norris in third. Russell’s ART team-mate Jack Aitken finished fourth, despite losing nearly half of his practice session earlier in the day after contact with Roy Nissany’s Campos-run machine.
Trident’s Arjun Maini ended the session in fifth, ahead of Arden International’s Maximilian Gunther in sixth.
Louis Deletraz was fourth at the half-way mark of the session, before dropping to seventh place in the closing stages for Charouz Racing System.
Despite having secured three out of five pole positions in 2018 entering the session, Alexander Albon qualified eighth. He ran wide on his first lap, taking his DAMS-prepared car through the gravel at Turn 4.
His second lap was only good enough for 10th place and it took a late improvement to climb to eighth.
The sprint race winner at Paul Ricard, Prema Racing’s Nyck de Vries ended up in ninth. The McLaren junior had placed outside the top 10 for the majority of the session.
Russian Time’s Tadasuke Makino rounded out the top 10. His team-mate Artem Markelov had several off-track moments during the 30-minutes.
Markelov bounced over the kerbs at Turn 9, before locking-up into the heavy braking zone at Turn 3 and running wide. Losing both laps in his second run, Markelov qualified in 18th.
