George Russell credited a “big reset” for his pole position at the Barcelona Grand Prix after adjusting his approach to get back into the Formula 1 title fight.
The Mercedes driver started the season strongly by winning the Melbourne opener, but was quickly outshone by team-mate Kimi Antonelli who has won the five grands prix since.
The 19-year-old headed into this weekend with a 68-point lead over Russell, though some of that is down to bad luck on the Briton’s side as he hasn’t scored in the last two races.
But Russell is in a good place to end that poor run after pipping Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton to pole for Sunday’s grand prix, while Antonelli took third and was three tenths off the pace.
“I just had a big reset going into this weekend,” Russell told Sky Sports. “Every lap from the start of FP1 we’ve been in the top two positions, and that is what I was most proud and happy about.
“After such a tough run of results, obviously for various different reasons, it was a big reset, and you never know how it’s going to pan out. But I really felt my groove again, really felt comfortable in the car, very similar to how I felt at the start of the year.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, George Russell, Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“To get the results, I’m just really grateful for the team and everyone who sort of stood by me in these couple of weeks.”
Monaco was perhaps the worst of them all for Russell, who qualified sixth before slipping out of the top 10 after suffering two penalties while Antonelli dominated from pole.
It caused the 28-year-old to claim that the nimbler 2026 cars suit Antonelli’s style more, an approach Russell had tried to shift towards before going back to his instincts in Spain.
“I’ve not looked at a single piece of data the whole weekend,” he added. “I’ve just driven the car and trusted my instincts, and that was a bit of a risk because these cars are so complicated and you’re always trying to find that next step of improvement.
“But that’s what I’ve been doing with my team for the last few races. Kimi was performing so well, and I did a bit of a copy-paste of what was working for him, and it wasn’t working for me.
“So I was like, I need to trust my own gut here, and something was telling me I needed to go in my own direction. I’m super glad I have!”
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
That has all led to Antonelli being second-best throughout this sunny weekend and FP3 even saw him become incredibly frustrated after aborting two late laps due to traffic.
“I haven’t felt good in the car,” Antonelli told Sky Sports. “I haven’t been able to adapt a little bit the driving style to the conditions we had this weekend, because obviously it’s a track that doesn’t forgive, especially because the tyres struggle to last over one lap.
“I haven’t been able to extract the maximum out of the tyres over the whole lap. In the last Q3 I had a really strong lap up until Turn 5, and then I just lost a lot of time from there on.
“That was the thing. I’ve been overdriving a little bit. This is a weekend where you kind of need to drive slow to go fast, and I haven’t done that well.
“But I think the race pace is stronger, it’s got to be stronger, so hopefully tomorrow we’ll have the same good feeling and we can progress.”
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