{"id":735004,"date":"2026-06-14T00:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T00:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735004\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T00:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T00:28:11","slug":"f1-2026-spanish-grand-prix-qualifying-results-george-russell-on-pole-position-video-highlights-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735004\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 2026, Spanish Grand Prix: Qualifying results, George Russell on pole position, video, highlights, news"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Russell returned to an approach that suits him well as he claimed pole position for the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix<\/a> in Saturday\u2019s qualifying session.<\/p>\n

The pre-season title favourite won the first race of the campaign in Melbourne but then struggled as his Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli stormed to victory in the next five GPs to take a dominant championship lead.<\/p>\n

Russell starts Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix third in the standings, 68 points behind Italian teenager Antonelli.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s been a difficult few races for me, obviously bad luck, (there have) been some poor performances in there but (I) went back to an approach that I knew works for me this weekend,\u201d Russell told reporters at Montmelo.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore important than the pole position for me was just seeing every lap of the whole weekend \u2026 I felt good and felt like myself again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell, who scored no points in Monaco after a late drive-through penalty, explained how going his own way was the key to his performance on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cCar setup, mentality, just going back to basics really,\u201d continued the 28-year-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese cars are so complicated, the tyres are complicated, the power units are complicated and it\u2019s challenging to get on top of things \u2026 especially when you\u2019ve got (Antonelli) \u2026 performing so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re trying to constantly improve and I think that doing some copy-pasting probably really put me on the back foot, so as I said, this weekend I\u2019ve just gone in my own direction, and that\u2019s what I\u2019ve done in the past few years and I\u2019m really glad to see it paying off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes driver George Russell of Britain. AP Photo\/Fatima ShbairSource: AP<\/p>\n

Just 0.064 seconds behind Russell in qualifying was seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who forced Antonelli onto the second row.<\/p>\n

Hamilton said that his performance was a surprise after sitting out the first practice session and then labouring in the next two.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a very, very tricky weekend for me, personally. (I) really, really struggled to get on pace after missing P1,\u201d said Hamilton, whose Ferrari was heavily upgraded going into the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed to make a huge leap going into qualifying \u2026 it was just having confidence in the car, in the rear of the car, and I think we did a really good job making adjustments,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kind of know where our North Star is, and for them to bring this upgrade here this weekend, I can\u2019t thank them enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said that Hamilton, whom he managed for over a decade, is always a threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy old friend \u2026 when people doubted whether he still had the speed, I\u2019ve always said if he\u2019s in the right frame of mind and the car suits him, then he is to be reckoned with,\u201d Wolff told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there isn\u2019t a tiny mistake at the end, he is a tenth-and-a-half quicker than us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Russell returned to an approach that suits him well as he claimed pole position for the Barcelona-Catalunya…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-735004","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\/735004","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=735004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}