George Russell sealed pole position for the first race of the season in Australia, beating Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar’s efforts while Max Verstappen suffered an unexpected early exit.
The Mercedes driver established his spot at the top early on, dominating throughout each segment of qualifying before positing a stunning final lap of 1m 18.518s to establish a major advantage over the rest of the field.
Antonelli was second to polish off a superb day for the Brackley team, while Hadjar shone on his Red Bull debut to claim third.
The full top 10 are- Pole: Russell, P2: Antonelli, P3: Hadjar, P4: Leclerc, P5: Piastri, P6: Norris, P7: Hamilton, P8: Lawson, P9: Lindblad and P10: Bortoleto.
What a result for the Mercedes boys! Going into this weekend and the season Russell and Mercedes are the favourites at the minute and this has just proved it! He now needs to go win this race tomorrow and it will be a brilliant start to the season. As for Antonelli, Mercedes done a masterpiece getting his car ready for Q1 but they did it and Antonelli done the driving where it mattered.
P3 for Hadjar! Just what he would’ve wanted going into his first race with Red Bull. I think it makes it even better as the team has at least one good result where as in the past if Max went out early (which is rare) the teammate wouldn’t do as good. But Hadjar is in the perfect place to score points, and maybe even a podium!
As for Verstappen, an unfortunate qualifying for him, crashed out of qualifying before even being able to set a lap time! His got a lot of work to do, to just get into the points.
Good result for Leclerc, P4 for the Monegasque, probably in the right place if you look at the results from the practices. It will be interesting to see how Ferrari do in the race, especially with strategies, can they get on the podium in the first round??
As for Lewis Hamilton, a decent result in 7th, was just beaten by the McLaren’s but it was very close between himself and Norris!
As for the McLaren’s 5th and 6th, not a bad result for them at all. They will be hoping to get at least one driver on the podium, so that battle could be interesting…
P8 for Lawson, a good result for him! And for the team as Lindblad qualified P9 in his first qualifying! Points would be an excellent way to start his rookie season, so let’s see if he gets them!
Bortoleto rounds out the top 10, a very good result for the Audi team as Hulkenberg is just behind his teammate in 11th, points will be wanted this weekend.
It was a great day. We knew there was a lot of potential in the car, but until you get to this first Saturday of the season you never know. It really came alive this afternoon, especially when the track temp cooled – we know we sort of tend to favour those conditions. I’m also really happy to have Kimi here next to me as well because it’s been such a hard job from all the team to deliver this car and they did an amazing job in the garage as well today, so all in all a really good day.
Russell on pole.
Jordan's Track Talk 
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