George Russell will start tomorrow’s Canadian Grand Prix from pole position. The Mercedes driver was quickest of all, courtesy of his Q2 time of 1’11”742 but in the Q3 session to decide the top ten places on the grid, he actually lapped in exactly 1’12 seconds, a time matched by Max Verstappen, but Russell takes the number one grid slot by virtue of having been first to set the time. Before the event, it would have seemed an unlikely achievement but it began to look ever more likely as the weekend progressed. Third was Lando Norris, just 21 thousandths slower than the front row pair.

This is Russell’s second ever pole, following on from the one at the Hungaroring in 2022. In fact, last year a Mercedes was on pole in Hungary, this time with Lewis Hamilton receiving the Pirelli miniature tyre award and today is the Anglo-German team’s 138th pole, its sixth here in Montreal.

Today the Pirelli Pole Position Award was presented to Russell by Liza Koshy, the American actress currently appearing in “A family affair,” a new Netflix film with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron. Having risen to prominence as a Youtuber, Liza made it onto the 2019 Forbes List of the 30 under 30 most promising people in Hollywood and she was also rated by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people on the internet.

THE DAY ON TRACK
The third free practice session was very busy, as it was the first time this weekend that the track was dry throughout the 60 minutes, allowing the teams and drivers to make up, at least in part, for time lost yesterday. Track conditions improved progressively and quickly, with times coming down until they were within less than a second of the predicted pole position based on simulations prior to the event (1’11”7). Most of the work was done using the two softest compounds, with teams carrying out several long runs with a heavy fuel load on the Medium while obviously favouring the Soft for performance runs.

Qualifying got underway on a dry track and even though there were a few drops of rain in the second part, it was not enough to require the use of wet weather tyres. The threat of a downpour weakened the closer the rain got to the circuit and so it didn’t cause any problems during the session. The uncertainty over what the weather had in store meant that the teams and drivers tried to make the most of every segment of the session, doing longer runs than they would in normal conditions.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING
“It was a very closely contested qualifying from start to finish with the times being incredibly close, evidenced by the fact that the two quickest drivers set identical times, while the top ten featured drivers from six different teams. So far, the weekend has been affected by changing weather conditions and everything would suggest that this will also be the case tomorrow. Even though all of today’s running took place on a dry track, there was still only a very limited amount of data gathered, given that the teams were only able to do long runs in the third free practice sessions.

“As expected, the track which has been completely resurfaced since last year, is still very green and therefore we saw very obvious evolution. This also led to significant graining, particularly with the Medium, which is the compound that almost everyone used for long runs. Therefore, it is increasingly likely that, if we have a dry race, the most effective strategy is a two-stop, the predominant choice being to use two sets of Hard tyres and that explains why seven teams still have two sets available for each driver. The one-stop strategy, using a combination of Medium and Hard, is possible on paper, but it’s very marginal. It’s not impossible that someone might try to start the race with this in mind, while retaining the flexibility to switch to a two-stop."