Russell celebrates pole position after two years: 'A sense of relief'

Speaking after the qualifying session, Russell shared his delight to have topped the table for the first time in two years: "Such a buzz," he began with. "It's been a while since we've experienced this feeling. So much hard work going on behind the scenes back in Brackley, at Brixworth. It's been a little while to be able to sort of get back in the fight. We've almost felt like all of that hard work hasn't been paying off. But I think these last two race weekends has really shown that." 

Yesterday's sessions were both affected with poor weather conditions. The start of Friday saw heavy levels of rainfall and hail. For many teams, this created issues. Nonetheless, Mercedes were still pleased with their performance. "To be honest, this weekend has been really challenging to know because of the conditions yesterday. You've had rain around all weekend," Russell said. "Just so glad that we could pull it off because it I feel like we really deserve it for all of this hard work. We've been putting a lot of effort into it. And the car has been feeling awesome this weekend."

Can Russell covert his pole to a win?

Russell has not won a race since Brazil 2022 when he secured his maiden F1 win. The British driver expects a tough race tomorrow, but remains optimistic. "I think it's going to be a tough race for everybody, to be honest. Graining seems to be an issue. And this new track surface, nobody really knows how it's going to pan out. We've got to go for victory. The car is genuinely really, really fast at the moment."

"It's going to be a long race. As soon as you fall off that cliff of the tyres tomorrow, it's going to be really difficult to recover. It could be a bit of a strategic game," he concluded.