George Russell has revealed how “changes” by Mercedes almost ended his hopes for pole position at the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix.
Russell and Mercedes appeared to be on the back-foot in Q3, the Briton abandoning his first lap, and running wide on his second, the pressure ramping up.
His first banker lap saw him off the pace of the frontrunners, but as the clock ticked down, he suddenly shot to the top of the timesheets, dethroning his teammate Kimi Antonelli.
The W17 looked a different car during qualifying compared to the Sprint, the Briton forced to defend from the McLaren of Lando Norris for most of the race, rivals closer to his pace.
Russell alluded to the change in the car’s feeling, revealing that Mercedes changed the setup and questioned their impact.
“It was always challenging coming back from the Sprint race,” said Russell.
“The car feels very different. You’re obviously into the qualifying format, and we made some changes as a team.
“We need to review if that was the right direction, but that last lap sort of came from nowhere, and it’s such a great feeling where it was such a challenging session, and then to pull it all together on that last lap to throw yourself up the leaderboard was epic.”
George Russell and Mercedes preparing for adverse weather
With rain expected for the race, Russell confirmed the changes were in anticipation of challenging conditions, with Mercedes sacrificing dry weather speed for potential wet weather performance.
“We made some changes based on the forecast for tomorrow,” he said.
“It may have hurt us a little bit for now. It just took the car out of sync a little bit, and both of us; Kimi was definitely more competitive than I in that session, but we weren’t as clear ahead of everyone else as we were yesterday.
“So it was definitely a challenge, but I just managed to redial my driving in for that last lap and put it together.”
Russell’s admission of setup changes shows that Mercedes has opted to play the long game in Canada.
But rain provides a reset in performance, and combined with Canada’s unique ability to provide action, a dominant Mercedes victory in the race is far from a foregone conclusion.
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