George Russell says that learning from Lewis Hamilton’s training helped him a lot in winning pole position for the Canadian Grand Prix .
Hamilton looked good in the final practice session in Montreal, as he finished Saturday morning almost four tenths ahead of Max Verstappen and Russell.
And it was this pace advantage that prompted Russell to dig a little deeper into what Hamilton was doing.
After reviewing his data to understand things better, he claimed that what he learned helped him secure first place, as his teammate ended up finishing seventh.
“Lewis was absolutely flying this morning and was well ahead of me,” Russell explained after taking pole position. “I had to do a lot of research into his data to try to figure out what he was doing differently. And, to be honest, it helped me a lot.”
“So, ahead of these qualifiers, I’m so glad we did, because I feel we really deserve all this hard work we’ve put in, and the car was fantastic this weekend.”
Mercedes’ first pole position since last year’s Hungarian GP came after the introduction of a new front wing to improve the shift in balance between fast and slow corners.
Russell admitted the result was a huge boost for the entire team, which has struggled to make progress with the current generation of ground-effect cars.
“What noise,” he adds. “It’s been a long time since we experienced this feeling. There is so much hard work going on behind the scenes in Brackley and Brixworth and it’s been a while to get back into the fray somehow. It almost seemed like all that hard work hadn’t paid off.”
“I think we struggled a lot with under-management before. Last year we had a lot of realignment and we were kind of trying to find a middle ground between what we had last year and what we had this year. And it seems like we’re hitting that sweet spot right now,” he explains.
“It seems like it’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, honestly. But really, there’s a sense of relief to see it actually translate into pole position.”
