Russell ‘never doubted’ himself as he returns to pole position for Canada Sprint

George Russell insisted that he has “never doubted” himself this season as he returned to top spot in Sprint Qualifying at the Canadian Grand Prix, having dropping behind his Mercedes team mate in recent rounds.

After dominating the season opener in Australia, the Briton found himself being outperformed by Kimi Antonelli, who became the only driver in history to convert his first three pole positions to consecutive victories.

The Miami Grand Prix was especially challenging for Russell, but he bounced back to claim pole for the Sprint by 0.068s over Antonelli at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which is also where he secured his first win of last season.

Speaking immediately after Sprint Qualifying, Russell said: “It obviously feels great after a tough Miami but I never doubted myself – I knew what I could do.

“Miami was obviously a bit unique. This is an amazing circuit here – high-grip, feels like you’re driving a proper Formula 1 car around here which is how it should be. I’m glad today came together.”

He was also buoyed by the Silver Arrows’ upgrades package which was originally set to be introduced later in the season, but was rescheduled partly as a response to McLaren and Ferrari’s Miami updates.

From a modified front wing to changes in the floor, Mercedes are targeting improved airflow over the car as well as ways to deal with the massive braking zones in Canada.

With the team locking out the front row for the Sprint – and maintaining an advantage of around three-tenths back to third-placed Lando Norris – the early performance of these upgrades have encouraged Russell even further.

“It’s definitely feeling great,” he said when asked about the adjustments. “The team have done such a great job to bring this forward.

“We obviously saw in Miami McLaren were really close and Ferrari not too far behind. On a track like this, it’s really excelling, so pleased to have it on the car. Pleased to be back in P1 – it’s been a little while but obviously still big focus for tomorrow.”

Despite his optimism, he recognised that Mercedes still need to work on one of their greatest weaknesses – race starts. At lights out, he and Antonelli have repeatedly lost positions to their rivals and subsequently had to fight back through the field, but Russell revealed that there is no quick fix to this issue.

He explained: “We’re making progress, we’re making baby steps in this regard so I’m not going to stand here and say we’re going to fly off the line in P1 and P2.

“I hope that’s going to be the case but history tells us it hasn’t happened very often – or at all – this year. Lando [Norris] was P3 and they’ve been making good starts so let’s see tomorrow. As I said, good first day.”

Antonelli shared his excitement at how well the upgrades seem to be performing, but identified a number of errors that he made throughout Sprint Qualifying that jeopardised his chances at adding another pole position to his tally.

Addressing his final flying lap, which allowed him to improve to P2, Antonelli said: “The lap was quite bad, to be fair. The session was not clean at all.

“I did a mistake in SQ2 and that threw me off a little bit, then I decided to go for Lap 1 on softs without doing prep and the tyres were a bit cold. It was just a messy session but I’m still P2 and very close so the potential is definitely there. We’ll do better tomorrow.”

Elaborating on whether the gap back to McLaren is representative of the pecking order, he added: “We brought the upgrade and that’s what it was giving to us in terms of performance. Of course we still need to understand the package a little bit more because the balance has changed a little bit, but overall it seems to have given us a little bit of an edge again.”