Qualifying results, George Russell pole position in Barcelona, McLaren, video, highlights, news

George Russell is back in his groove.

That’s what the Briton says, anyway, after storming to a tightly contested pole ahead of Lewis Hamilton at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

It was a much-needed result for Russell despite it being his second pole position in only three grands prix. Having been belted by title-leading teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli for weeks, he needed a steadying result to reset his flagging championship campaign.

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Unlike in Canada, where he last took pole but by a tiny margin over Antonelli, this weekend he’s clearly been the better Mercedes driver, with Antonelli lagging behind after having had to sit out FP1.

Unable to get into a rhythm, he had no answer for the on-song Russell.

But in revelling in his pole position, the Englishman gave us a glimpse into where he’s head’s been since his form took a dive at the Miami Grand Prix about a month ago.

“Miami was just the first weekend where everything felt pretty challenging,” he said.

“That’s where I think I can accept — and with my direct group of engineers we can accept — we probably made some wrong decisions in these last three races.

“These cars are so complicated, the tyres are complicated, the power units are complicated, and it’s challenging to get on top of things, especially when I’ve got a guy like (Antonelli) next to me who’s been performing so well.

“You’re trying to constantly improve, and I think that doing some copy-pasting probably really put me on the back foot.”

As alluded to by team boss Toto Wolff, Russell had responded to Antonelli’s challenge this year by trying to follow the Italian on car set-up. That was particularly the case in Miami, where Antonelli was quicker than Russell even last season, something the Briton has put down to the track’s unusual surface.

As Antonelli continued improving, the impetus to keep following his configuration apparently increased until, after Monaco, Russell decided he needed to reset his approach.

“This weekend I’ve just gone in my own direction, and that’s what I’ve done in the past for the last few years, and really glad to see it paying off,” he said.

“As I said, more than anything, more than this pole position, I’m just glad to feel myself again, feel at one with the car again, as I have done for the last few years.

“I’ve got to be honest, just really happy to be back in my groove.”

Pole, though, is just one part of the equation.

With Hamiltons tarting alongside him on the front row — and Ferrari has been getting reliably better starts than Mercedes this year — victory is far from secure. Antonelli will also get a great slipstream on the long run from the grid to the first turn and will surely attempt a move on his teammate if he can get the run.

With hot weather forecast to punish the tyres, Sunday’s race will be a stern test of the new George Russell.

HAMILTON’S RUN CONTINUES AS LECLERC FEELS SHAME

There were moments this weekend at which it seemed Lewis Hamilton’s form upturn was about to be halted by teammate Charles Leclerc.

Leclerc has looked like the quicker driver for almost the entire weekend, and at times the margin between them was alarmingly large — 2025-style large, even, for those willing to invoke some of Hamilton’s darker days.

Yet come Q3, it was Hamilton who put it all on the line and walked away with his first Ferrari front-row start.

“It’s been a very tricky weekend for me personally,” he said. “I really struggled to get on pace after missing FP1 [for Dino Beganovic].

“I’ve never been so down before in a sense of the gap between Charles and me and to everybody else — it was 0.5 seconds to 0.8 seconds.

“I needed to make a huge leap going into qualifying, and I knew where the time was. It was just having the confidence in the car, in the rear of the car, and I think we did a really good job, making adjustments.”

Hamilton revealed he’d taken himself back to his motorhome between FP3 and qualifying to clear his head and refocus. Clearly it worked.

But there’s a bigger-picture story for Ferrari here.

Barcelona is considered an honest test of a car’s general performance, and Ferrari was just 0.064 seconds slower than Mercedes.

The telemetry shows that the Ferrari car is a beast through the corners with no exceptions. Through the long and fast corners it’s particularly good. It’s losing time to Mercedes only down the straights.

The Scuderia brought a major upgrade package to this weekend. Its last big upgrade in Miami received mixed reviews. There seems to be little doubt about this one.

“This is really down to everyone back at the factory. They’ve been working so hard. We kind of know where our north star is, and for them to bring this upgrade here this weekend, I can’t thank them enough for the hard work that they’ve put in to bring it.

“Obviously they’re still so quick, the Mercedes, so still have work to do to fully close the gap or at least get ahead, but I’m really hoping that tomorrow we can.

“We’re still early in the season, so the fight is on.”

Hamilton’s strong last lap made it difficult to argue that more would have been on the table had Leclerc still been on track. The Monegasque put it all on the line in Q3 as well, but rather than a front-row start, he walked away with car damage.

Still, Leclerc was more than 0.15 seconds up on Russell in Q2. Perhaps there really was more to be had.

After two difficult weekends, Leclerc found the situation tough to bear.

“I feel very ashamed after the last three weekends that have been particularly difficult for me to find pace for issues I had, and today and this weekend I think everything felt really, really good,” he said.

“In these days I need to deliver, and I didn’t, so I felt very ashamed in general.”

But Leclerc was also glowing in his review of the upgrades and optimistic he could make up ground. He’s the best starter among the frontrunners, and with strategy a big question mark in sizzling Spain, he should have a chance to score big points on Sunday.

MCLAREN GETS ANOTHER REALITY CHECK

McLaren was optimistic on Friday night that it was back fighting at the front and could banish the bad memories of Canada and Monaco.

Though qualifying in Barcelona was certainly a step forward on last week’s misery in Monte Carlo, it wasn’t exactly the dream result either.

Lando Norris, having topped FP2 on Friday evening, qualified fourth and was a hefty 0.322 seconds off pole. Oscar Piastir, who was second to Russell in FP1 and FP3, was 0.089 seconds further back — though that added up to seventh on the grid in a super-tight battle with Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar.

McLaren dominated last year’s Barcelona race, with Piastri leading home Norris in one-two formation. It won it despite also winning in Monaco, a very different circuit.

Norris said that it was time for the team to accept that its 2024–25 title-winning era was over.

“I think it’s tough for us to realise we’re not at the same level as what we were,” he said. “We don’t have a car that is just good everywhere.

“We have a car that is pretty good in Miami, pretty reasonable in Canada, not bad here but shocking in Monaco.

“For us to be 0.3s off here, I think it’s just a good effort, considering we were 0.6s or 0.7s [off] last weekend.

“That’s not a bad thing. No, we’re happy. It’s P4. The other guys did good laps, but we were definitely unable to achieve that.”

Piastri lamented that a wobble in the final sector — exiting turn 10 as the circuit climbs near the end of the lap — cost him as many as four positions and a shot on the second row.

“It was a good lap until the last sector,” he said. “Until that point it was strong.

“Obviously very, very close margins out there — I could’ve done with that little bit extra that I had.”

On paper there should be some optimism that Sunday could be better. The track was sizzling at 52°C in qualifying, with the ambient up to 31°C. It’s forecast to be even hotter on race day.

The weather is putting the tyres under stress at what is already an extremely demanding layout for the rubber — and Pirelli has brought softer tyres here this year compared to last season.

If McLaren believes it has gentle tyre usage, that could pay big dividends in a race that could have three pit stops per driver.

“It’s tough to know,” Piastri said. “We’ve not really seen anyone in these kinds of conditions at a circuit like this with so much deg.

“I think Mercedes are going to be very, very strong, and I think Ferrari as well probably will be too, but as for us, it’s difficult to know at the moment.”

F1’S SLOWEST TEAM IS GETTING SLOWER

A remarkable streak was shattered in Barcelona.

For the first time in 42 grands prix, dating back to the 2024 British Grand Prix, Lance Stroll has outqualified Fernando Alonso.

Alonso whitewashed Stroll last year and looked on track to do the same again this season with what is still the biggest gap between teammates by qualifying time this year.

But Stroll has averted what could have been an embarrassing second season of uninterrupted qualifying defeated by getting one over his veteran teammate by a slender 0.057.

“I don’t care,” Stroll said. “I don’t give a s***.”

It was, after all, an exclusive battle to avoid qualifying last.

Aston Martin isn’t just at the back of the pack. It’s slipping further and further adrift of the midfield.

At a circuit typically considered a litmus test for aerodynamic performance, Aston Martin was a whopping 4.079 seconds off pole and a stunning 1.213 seconds behind newcomer Cadillac too in dire confirmation that the big-spending operation is stone cold last.

Alonso, who signalled ahead of the weekend that this could be his last race in Barcelona as retirement talk intensifies, dismissed the notion that Aston Martin’s plight was putting a crimp on his home event.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I came here knowing that we are the last, and we are last, so no surprises there.

“Nothing has been exposed. We knew that we had the worst car and the worst engine and we’ve been very clear in every race so far that we have to work.

“We repeat every weekend, and we will arrive in Austria in two weeks, we will be last in qualifying.”

Aston Martin’s decline is real. Charting a line of best fit through its qualifying performance, it’s moving on average 0.102 seconds away from pole per race.

But credit should also be paid to Cadillac here, the team many assumed would be comfortably slowest this season.

It’s not just benefiting from Aston’s slide. From the first round to Barcelona, it’s the second most improved team in the sport, gaining on the leaders at 0.146 seconds per weekend on average.

That said, Alonso, whose last win was in Barcelona 13 years ago, insisted that he still believed in Aston Maritn’s plan.

“We opted for this strategy,” he said. “In the second part of the year arrives a new car on the aerodynamic side, arrives a new engine, and we have the hopes there.”

“We know the weaknesses, we know that we have to work, and we are on it.”