George Russell has admitted that claiming pole position in Formula 1’s Canadian Grand Prix will provide “relief” to Mercedes that its promise has turned into a result.
Mercedes had endured an underwhelming start to the season, but the team was adamant that recent upgrades had positioned it back on the right path with the W15.
The German outfit had shown promising pace in practice at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and Russell delivered when it mattered to pip Max Verstappen in a dead heat.
But while he did enough to log his second career F1 pole position, Russell admitted he was shocked to not better his initial time in Q3 when he switched to new tyres.
“Yeah, it was really challenging to be honest,” Russell assessed. “It was all weekend, every single session and lap has been changing.
“The sun comes out, the track temperature warms up, then the clouds come in, it’s spitting and it’s just really, really difficult to find that sweet spot.
“And you know, my lap on the used tyre was really, really strong in Q3 and I was expecting to find about three or four-tenths for the second lap on the new tyre.
“And we actually just didn’t, it didn’t click, but it was fortunate enough the first lap was good enough for pole.”
Russell believes his breakthrough result has vindicated the team’s recent renewed optimism and demonstrates that its earlier-season woes are a matter of the past.
“Well it always feels better when your name’s towards the top of the timesheets to be honest, but it’s just turning really nicely through the corners,” he explained.
“I think we struggled a lot with understeer before. Last year we had a lot of oversteer and we’ve sort of been just trying to find the halfway house between what we had last year and what we had this year and it feels like we’re sort of dialling in that sweet spot right now.
“So it feels like it’s something we’ve been saying for a long time in all honesty, but just really a sense of relief to actually see it translate into the full position.”
Looking ahead to the race, Russell expects that preserving the rubber and protecting against graining will be essential to his chances of converting pole into the win.
“I think it’s going to be a tough race for everybody to be honest,” he assessed. “Graining seems to be an issue.
“And this new track surface, nobody really knows how it’s going to pan out.
“But you know, we’ve got to go for victory where the car is genuinely really, really fast at the moment. But it’s going to be a long race, I think.
“As soon as you fall off that cliff of the tyres tomorrow, it’s going to be really difficult to recover.
“So yeah, it could be a bit of a strategic game, maybe not as extreme as we saw in Monaco last week, but maybe something similar.”
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