{"id":734775,"date":"2026-06-13T21:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734775\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T21:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:45:10","slug":"f1-news-2026-charles-leclerc-frustrated-after-qualifying-crash-george-russell-pole-barcelona-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/734775\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 News 2026: Charles Leclerc frustrated after qualifying crash; George Russell pole Barcelona race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Hamilton<\/a> finished just 0.064 seconds behind pole sitter George Russell in qualifying for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, a spot Hamilton believes puts his Ferrari team \u201cin a good position to be able to fight\u201d for first place in Monday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

In finishing just behind the Mercedes driver, Hamilton notched his best qualifying performance ahead of a Grand Prix. <\/p>\n

\"Charles<\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

His position for Monday\u2019s 66-lap race will be his first Grand Prix<\/a> front-row start since 2024\u2019s British Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll weekend we\u2019ve been kind of four-tenths off these guys, so even with the upgrade we thought maybe that\u2019s where we were,\u201d said Hamilton.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for us to be that close, less than a tenth between us, it\u2019s a real showing of the hard work everyone at the factory has done to bring these upgrades to this track, so a big, big thank you to everyone back in Maranello.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to keep pushing, keep developing, and I\u2019m hoping tomorrow we can squeeze some more out of this and I hope we keep up with these guys for once.\u201d<\/p>\n

The seven-time World Champion topped Q1 on Sunday. His teammate, Charles Leclerc<\/a>, finished less than half-a-tenth behind Russell in Q2 before suffering a crash at the start of Q3.<\/p>\n

A frustrated Leclerc also crashed out of the most recent Grand Prix in Monaco. At the time, he blamed his brakes, but he has no such excuse this time around. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, there\u2019s none of that,\u201d he said when asked about the brakes. <\/p>\n

\u201cI adapted very well straight from FP2, I felt very at ease with it, and there\u2019s nothing of that – there\u2019s no excuses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt very ashamed after the last three weekends that have been particularly difficult for me to find pace for issues I had.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, and this weekend, I think everything felt really, really good and on these days I need to deliver and I didn\u2019t. So I felt very ashamed in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Runaway championship leader Kimi Antonelli came in third in the other Mercedes, with McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris taking the fourth slot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been a little bit of a difficult weekend for me, didn\u2019t really have the feeling in the car,\u201d said Antonelli, who has 156 points after just six races, a whopping 66 points ahead of Hamilton and 68 ahead of Russell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be an interesting race tomorrow,\u201d Russell said. <\/p>\n

\u201cLewis did an amazing job to get up there. We thought the fight was with ourselves and McLaren and Lewis was very fast in that session.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australian Oscar Piastri qualified seventh, behind both Red Bulls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton finished just 0.064 seconds behind pole sitter George Russell in qualifying for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-734775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}