Russell takes pole on his 100th Mercedes race weekend as Antonelli admits to difficult qualifying in Barcelona

George Russell claimed pole position for the 2026 Barcelona Grand Prix on Saturday, with teammate Kimi Antonelli qualifying third after a difficult session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

Credit: Formula One

Russell's 1:14.679 put him 0.064 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari and 0.319 ahead of Antonelli, who will start off the front row for the first time this season. The pole was Russell's first since the Australian Grand Prix opener, ending Antonelli's run of five consecutive qualifying P1s. It also came on his 100th race weekend with Mercedes.

Russell was measured but clearly relieved after the session. "It's been a great weekend so far," he said. "I kind of feel like my old self again, where every lap I'm doing my job, always fighting those top positions. Obviously, for the last few races, for numerous reasons, things haven't quite been on our side, but I came in this weekend with just a clean slate, felt good and, yeah, just great to be on pole."

He had gone back to basics after a difficult run of recent races. "Car set-up, mentality, just going back to basics really," Russell said. "These cars are so complicated, the tyres are complicated, the power units are complicated, and it's challenging to get on top of things.

"Especially when I've got a guy like this next to me who's been performing so well — you're trying to constantly improve, and I think doing some copy-pasting probably really put me on the back foot. So this weekend I've just gone in my own direction and that's what I've done in the past for the last few years, and really glad to see it paying off."

Russell described the weekend as feeling like a return to the form he had during winter testing and the early rounds. "It just feels back to what I felt at the start of the year during winter testing — Barcelona, Bahrain testing, Melbourne, China," he said.

"Miami was just the first weekend where everything felt pretty challenging, and that's where I think my direct group of engineers and I can accept we probably made some wrong decisions in these last three races. More than anything, more than this pole position, I'm just glad to feel myself again."

He was also candid about what Sunday will demand. "Of course Kimi is going to be a real threat, no doubt," Russell said. "But Lewis, I think, really surprised all of us with his strong pace today. We all thought the fight was going to be with the McLarens in qualifying. From lap one in Q1 it was, 'Well, where's this come from?' So maybe we'll have a surprise tomorrow as well."

Credit: Formula One

Antonelli, meanwhile, was honest about where his weekend had fallen short. "It's been a little bit of a difficult weekend so far for me," he said. "Didn't really have the feeling with the car. Today I've been lacking a little bit. In the last lap I lost basically everything in the last sector — a couple of big slides and the tyre just went away from me. So definitely it was not the best performance."

He also acknowledged the impact of a disrupted practice programme. Antonelli was out of the car during FP1 — as was Hamilton on the Ferrari side — and had a messy FP3.

"FP3 was a very messy session for me, a lot of traffic and not being able to try the second tyre definitely made things a little bit more complicated," he said. "But it's what it is. Still P3, and now we'll focus on tomorrow."

Despite the qualifying deficit, Antonelli pointed to his long-run pace as a reason for optimism heading into Sunday. "Long run was strong yesterday, so definitely that's a positive," he said. "Looking forward to tomorrow and hopefully we will have the same kind of pace."

Both drivers flagged tyre management as the defining factor for Sunday's race, with Barcelona set to be the hottest race of the season so far. Antonelli highlighted the added dimension of running without a movable rear wing.

"Without using the wing, the slipstream is going to be even stronger," he said, "so important to get a good start and then try to get away cleanly into Turn 1. From that point on it's going to be trying to play the long game. Tyres are very fragile here and we might see a lot of stops during the race."