George Russell snatched pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix on Saturday with the very last lap of qualifying, beating Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli by 0.068 seconds after a session that kept changing shape until the end. Russell had already won the sprint race earlier in the day, then delivered one more decisive lap when it mattered most.
Antonelli had briefly held the advantage after going fastest on his first run, and Lando Norris was still in the fight for pole before Russell’s final push. Russell’s first lap on that run was only good enough for third, but he found more on the second flying lap and moved to the top. “It is the most exhilarating feeling in the world when it comes at the last minute out of nowhere,” Russell said after taking pole. “There are times when you expect to be on pole and every lap is the quickest, but the times when it comes together at the end are the sweetest.”
Russell said Mercedes had changed the car for qualifying with wet weather predicted for Sunday in mind, a call that added another layer to a session decided by tiny margins. “The car was out of sync, out of balance for much of the session,” he said. “I knew I needed a big lap and on my preparation lap I saw Kimi on the TV screen going purple and I was like, right, I need to bring something big here.”
Antonelli said the tyre window was hard to hit and that the gap between the Mercedes drivers was painfully small. “It was very difficult to get the tyres in the right window. It was a pity to miss out by such a small amount but George did a great lap,” he said. Russell called the finish “such a challenging session” and said doing it “on the very last lap was epic.”
Behind the Mercedes pair, Oscar Piastri was fourth fastest and Lewis Hamilton fifth fastest, with Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar separating Hamilton from Charles Leclerc in the qualifying order. Arvid Lindblad and Franco Colapinto completed the top 10. Hamilton also faced an investigation for allegedly impeding Pierre Gasly in the first part of qualifying, but officials took no action after Gasly said he did not consider Hamilton’s driving to have impeded him. Hamilton later said he “didn't get the last lap.”
The result sets the grid for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix and gives Mercedes a front-row lockout on pure pace in a session decided by 0.068 seconds. With the weather forecast still hanging over the weekend, Russell’s late pole may matter even more than it did when he climbed from third to first in the final moments.
