By Angelica Medina
MONTREAL, May 22 (Reuters) – George Russell grabbed a much-needed pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix sprint race on Friday with Mercedes teammate and Formula One championship leader Kimi Antonelli alongside on the front row.
McLaren’s reigning champion Lando Norris qualified third in Friday’s session with teammate Oscar Piastri fourth at Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will line up fifth and sixth respectively for Saturday’s race.
Italian Antonelli, winner of the last three grands prix and the youngest championship leader at 19 years old, leads Russell by 20 points after four rounds.
“This feels great after a tough Miami but I never doubted myself. I know what I can do,” said Russell, the pre-season title favourite who won the opener in Australia before being eclipsed by Antonelli.
“It feels like you are driving a proper F1 car around here, which is how it should be. It came together today.”
FIRST TIME MONTREAL HOSTS A SPRINT
Montreal is the third sprint weekend of the season, after China and Miami, and is hosting the format for the first time.
Russell won the sprint in China and Norris in Miami, both from pole.
“The lap was quite bad, to be fair,” said Antonelli, whose best lap was 0.068 slower than Russell’s. “The session was not clean at all. I did a mistake in SQ2 and that threw me off a little bit.
“We brought the upgrade … of course we still need to understand a little bit more the package because the balance has changed a little bit. Overall, it seems to have given us a little bit of an edge again.”
Norris said he was happy with third, 0.315 off pole and 0.019 ahead of Piastri, and said it came as a surprise.
“After this morning we were a little bit worried how far off we were, with the lack of confidence in the car,” he said. “We made some tweaks and it seemed to make a good improvement.
“It wasn’t the best lap, I could have made more of it, but looking at the gap to the guys ahead, not much more.”
Red Bull’s four-times world champion Max Verstappen qualified seventh with teammate Isack Hadjar eighth.
The 100km sprint pays out points to the top eight, with eight to the winner.
Neither Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson nor Williams Alex Albon took part in qualifying after the New Zealander suffered a hydraulics problem in practice while the Thai crashed after hitting a groundhog.
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso then crashed in the first phase, forcing a delay as the barriers were repaired.
“I locked up the fronts and you are a passenger after that,” said the Spaniard. “(I was) too much on the limit.”
(Reporting by Angelica Medina in Montreal; Writing by Alan Baldwin in London; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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