Russell secures pole to open F1 season at Australian GP

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Mercedes has revealed its dominant hand during qualifying for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

George Russell earned his ninth-career pole position ahead of his teammate Kimi Antonelli for the team’s 83rd front-row lockout and its first since the 2024 British Grand Prix.

Russell topped all three sessions in F1’s knockout qualifying format, finally casting aside questions of where Mercedes was in the new-era pecking order. His pole time, at 1 minute, 18.518 seconds, was almost eight-tenths faster than the nearest non-Mercedes challenger, Red Bull's Isack Hadjar, who completed the top three.

"It was a great day, we knew there was a lot of potential in the car, but until we get to this first Saturday of the season, you never know," Russell said. "But it really came alive this afternoon, especially when the track temperatures cooled, we know we tend to favor those conditions."

Antonelli was relieved to have made it onto the front row alongside his teammate after a crash in final practice at the exit of turn two meant it was a race in the Mercedes garage to get him out for qualifying.

"It’s been a very stressful day. Unfortunately, I went into the wall (in FP3)," he said. "But the guys (in the garage) were the heroes today to put the car back on track."

Hadjar was impressive by qualifying third on his debut for Red Bull, his highest-ever grid position.

"The only thing I can do is take them at the start, but they’re just too fast at the moment," Hadjar said of Mercedes. "I want to keep my position and a second podium would be cool."

Ferrari showed it’s neck-and-neck with McLaren on pace, with just one and a half tenths seconds covering the four drivers just beyond the top-three — with Charles Leclerc qualifying fourth, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in fifth and sixth respectively, and Lewis Hamilton in seventh.

Racing Bulls showed they’ve taken a step forward over the winter, with New Zealander Liam Lawson eighth ahead of his highly-rated rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad.

The big surprise of the session came from four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen, who triggered red flags at Melbourne’s Albert Park after he lost control of his Red Bull car in braking for turn one in the first half of Q1 and ended in the barriers.

The Dutchman, who was unhurt from the crash, though upset that his brakes locked up, will now start from the back of the grid.

F1 heads into a new era this year, with unprecedented changes across the chassis (car) and power unit, which now feature an almost 50:50 output split between the turbo 1.6-liter V6 engine and electrical energy harvested from the brakes, one that requires a new, often counterintuitive driving style from the drivers.