Front-row start secured after solid points scored on Saturday in Shanghai

• George Russell qualified second, and on the front-row, for tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix, with Kimi Antonelli P8.
• Saturday’s F1 Sprint proved uneventful for our duo. Having started fifth and seventh respectively, George made up one place to finish ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc whilst Kimi held onto his position.
• With a tightly packed and competitive field, each segment of Qualifying proved a tense affair.
• The team continued to monitor and evaluate various different out lap and preparation lap strategies in order to get the most out of the Soft compound tyre.
• Both cars made it through to Q3, with Kimi unfortunate to drop a couple of tenths in the final sector to leave him P8.
• George meanwhile saved his best lap for last. A strong effort putting him P2 on the grid behind the McLaren of Oscar Piastri, with a deficit of just 0.082s to the Australian.
• That is George’s fourth front-row start in six races (São Paulo, Las Vegas, Qatar, China) and the 15^th in his F1 career so far.
  

George Russell

When we are able to bring it all together, we can definitely compete right at the front. I’m therefore really pleased that we were able to qualify P2 and will start on the front-row tomorrow. I don’t think anybody expected to be challenging the McLarens, but I don’t think they optimised what they had today. P3 would have been a good result, so P2 is a great result. I’m proud of the whole team and the job they’ve done.

For the final lap in Q3, we tried a slightly different out lap preparation. We’d been trying a few different things throughout the session but on that last lap it finally clicked. I think that was one of my best qualifying efforts of my career and it was really rewarding to come away with a good starting position for the race. Tomorrow is a new day, and the Grand Prix will be dictated by race pace. Hopefully we can look after the tyres well, utilise the pace that is in the car, and come home with a strong result.

Kimi Antonelli

I am a little disappointed to qualify P8. We tried various out lap strategies, but it was a challenge to extract the best out of the tyre consistently. I had some good laps throughout the session but my two laps in Q3 weren’t my strongest. It is useful in helping me continue to build my learning and my knowledge though. It was definitely a good experience to have such a tricky Qualifying session, having to adapt every run to get the best from the tyres, and help me improve.

The positives we can take from today are that, when it’s hooked up, the car is feeling good. George definitely showed what was possible today. The pace is there to move forward tomorrow, and we will be looking to make up some positions across the Grand Prix.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

We were struggling to get the tyres in the right window throughout Qualifying. We kept at it though, worked as a team, and got it right at the end of the session. George was able to put the whole lap together and P2 was the result. It was a great effort and another calm and composed performance from him. For Kimi, he had good speed in Q3 but was unfortunate to lose time on his final lap in the last sector. Without that, he would have been challenging for the top six. Nevertheless, it is more valuable experience for him in what was his first Q3 appearance of his career.

Tomorrow’s race is set up to be very interesting. We expect the McLarens to be strong whilst the Ferraris were the stand-out in this morning’s Sprint. Starting from P2, we will be looking to hold our own in the early stages and see where we net out. Nobody has run the Hard compound tyre yet so that is an unknown going into Sunday. Let’s see what we can do.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Qualifying was a difficult session to manage. It was challenging to know exactly what the tyres needed to extract the maximum performance. We tried various out lap profiles but didn’t manage to nail it in the first two segments of the session. We made a good step for Q3 though and George’s final lap was very strong. That gave him P2 on tomorrow’s grid. For Kimi, his first Q3 lap was deleted due to track limits. On his second and final effort, he lost a little bit of time in the final sector, but it was still a respectable effort, particularly given it was his first Q3 session of his F1 career. He will naturally be disappointed he’s not starting a couple of positions further up, but he can look forward to an attacking race tomorrow.

We saw in this morning’s Sprint that graining was perhaps even worse than most expected. Cars were having to manage heavily, and as soon as you pushed the tyre, it began to suffer. That is useful learning for tomorrow’s Grand Prix where the finishing result is likely to be dictated by how well you are able to manage the tyres, particularly the front-left. Nobody has had any experience on the Hard compound so that is another unknown to throw into the mix. We will be looking to execute well and bring home another solid points haul, as we were able to do in the Sprint.