George Russell has taken pole position for Saturday’s Formula 1 sprint race at Zandvoort, edging Lando Norris by just 0.041s in a desperately tight Dutch GP sprint qualifying session. The Mercedes driver’s 1m11.567s in SQ3 was his first pole in four race weekends — and it left championship leader Kimi Antonelli, his own team-mate, down in fifth.
How Dutch GP sprint qualifying unfolded
Russell had topped neither SQ1 nor SQ2, those honours going to Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri, but Motorsport.com reported that his final run was enough by the slimmest of margins. Leclerc wound up third, 0.055s adrift, with Piastri fourth. Antonelli was 0.227s off his team-mate after running through the gravel at Turn 13 on his first flying lap, damage he said cost around “25 points of downforce”. Max Verstappen took sixth on the weekend he committed his future to Red Bull, one place ahead of a struggling Lewis Hamilton, 0.624s back in the second Ferrari.
The order matters for a title fight that resumed after the summer break with Antonelli in front, Hamilton second and Russell third — 50 and 59 points behind respectively, according to the BBC. Hamilton’s Friday continues a run of weekends in which, as we noted this week, Ferrari errors have let Antonelli off the hook.
“It has been a tough end to the first part of the year so I am really happy to be back,” Russell said. “The lap felt really good. It is always difficult in sprint qualifying because we have just a lap to put it together, but it all came together nicely.” He added: “It’s still just the sprint and the main qualifying will be the key one.”
Saturday brings the 24-lap sprint and then qualifying proper for Sunday’s final Dutch Grand Prix.
