How Hamilton managed to help Russell secure pole position in Canada
F1 News
George Russell has explained how Lewis Hamilton helped him secure pole position for the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix. The seven-time World Champion was ahead or on par with Russell all weekend until it finally mattered in the third and final part of qualifying.
How Hamilton helped Russell to qualify on pole position
Hamilton finished fastest in the third free practice session, beating Verstappen by almost four-tenths. Russell has explained he used the data from Hamilton and changed his own set-up prior to qualifying.
"Lewis was absolutely flying this morning, and he was well ahead of me and I had to look a lot into his data to try and understand what he was doing differently. And to be honest, that helped me a huge amount ahead of this qualifying," Russell said after the qualifying session.
Russell also received some help from Alex Albon during qualifying itself. Coming down the straight prior to the final chicane, Russell followed Albon and picked up a minimal tow. But with Verstappen recording the same qualifying time, it's clear any advantage ensured he got the pole position.
Still, Mercedes have made improvements in recent weeks, and Russell even suggests they've finally found the "sweet spot". "It's just turning really nicely through the corners. 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. It feels like sort of dialling in that sweet spot right now," he added.