It would be so on-brand for George Russell to have been on track for a restorative pole position after last weekend’s championship defeat only to have it taken away from him for reasons outside his control.
Of course pole was never actually on the table — his five-place grid penalty for an engine change put paid to that — but clocking the fastest lap in the sort of tricky weather in which the best drivers tend to make the difference would have been a worthy morale booster all the same.
He and Lando Norris traded fastest laps in the opening few minutes of Q3 as dark storm clouds began rolling over the circuit.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K | Get Kayo now >
Norris went fastest first, then Russell. Norris capitalised on the drying track to improve again, and then Russell signalled his intention to reply forcefully by setting the fastest time in the first sector.
“I felt really confident in the rain,” he said. “I think my pace, along with Lando’s, was by far the best out there.”
But then he caught Alex Albon.
Albon was on a fast lap, but such is the disparity between the frontrunning Mercedes and the backmarker Williams that Russell was quickly on the back of the Thai driver.
By turn 7, the beginning of the twisty middle bit of the track, it was beginning to hurt his lap time.
“Move, Albono!” he radioed his team, and then: “You need to tell me what I’m doing — if I’m backing or going.”
He was asking whether he had time to slow down, create some space ahead of him and then try again for another lap.
“We’re going to back up now — back up now,” came the instruction from Marcus Dudley, his race engineer.
“Are you sure?” Russell replied.
Reassured, Russell slowed down between turns 11 and 12.
It was only as he started his next lap that he realised it’d been a mistake. The rain had intensified, and the track was now too wet to match Norris’s time.
“Mate, I should’ve f***ing finished the lap!” he fumed. “Mate, you f***ing told me to back off. What the hell!”
Team principal Toto Wolff intervened: “George, you’re P2.”
Russell was unplacated.
“P2? I don’t want to be P2. I want to be P1. That was a P1 lap.”
But it was Norris who got the P1 time for the third season in succession in Interlagos.
“I knew the Mercedes were very quick, so I knew in the two laps we had, I had to make the most of that opportunity, and I did,” Norris said, unintentionally adding salt to the wound.
“Those are very rewarding days for me and the team when we maybe don’t have the absolute performance as a package to be able to get it, but when you put things together and you’re driving well, like today, then we’re able to achieve it, and that’s a pleasant thing for me and the team.”
Kostecki locks in Supercars Grand Final | 02:36
DID MERCEDES COST RUSSELL POLE?
There’s not much doubt that Russell had the pace for pole position. The Mercedes is still a better car than the McLaren, and its extra downforce should have been enough to make the difference in these sorts of conditions.
Russell was also comfortably replying to Norris’s times — and he was the last of the two of them to set a fast lap before the rain intensified. Unfortunately for him, he backed off on that lap after having set a purple first sector that remained unbeaten in Q3.
“It’s been a while (since I’ve performed at this level),” he said. “Baku was the last time when every lap I was doing we were basically top of the leaderboard.
“Lando was probably the only other driver who was up there with me, but I very much felt I had the legs.
“It sums up everything this season.”
But did the Mercedes mistake of aborting the lap actually cost him pole position?
The telemetry suggests it was doubtful.
Russell was 0.18s quicker than Norris’s pole time through the first sector, and even after catching Albon and slowing as a result, he was still 0.058s ahead of Norris as he headed towards turn 11, after which he’d lift off and abandon the lap.
That’s not enough to assume he would’ve beaten Norris, however.
From the marker we used above all the way to the finish line, Albon shipped 1.768s to Norris.
Russell would have been able to go faster than that even without overtaking the Williams car. Albon also seemed to have a wobble at Junção, the final braking zone, which might have given Russell a chance to use more of his car’s pace up the hill.
But even a small amount of time lost behind the Williams would have left him with a slower time than Norris.
The mistake, therefore, wasn’t backing off; it was the way he was positioned on the track for that final lap in the first place.
Mercedes identified it, but much too late to give Russell enough time to complete a lap.
“I don’t think it would have been enough for pole,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “But obviously he’s driven perfectly all session and would have merited pole.
“George was in a league of his own today.”
Cold comfort for a driver who already feels deeply aggrieved by the misfortune that has hampered his title campaign this season.
And more galling still that it should be his championship-winning teammate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who should directly benefit by taking his position on the front row, from where he’ll have a great chance to take his 10th victory of the season on a day Mercedes is likely to win the constructors championship.
UNLUCKY PIASTRI MAKES GRIM PERSONAL HISTORY
For the first time in more than three years, Oscar Piastri has failed to make Q3 on consecutive weekends.
The last time he missed out on pole shots at back-to-back weekends was at the 2023 Miami and Monaco grands prix, just the fifth and sixth races of his career.
In Brazil this weekend, however, it was at least partly down to bad luck.
The Australian was on his best lap of the afternoon when he rounded Junção and began climbing up the hill.
Suddenly his steering wheel flashed yellow — yellow flags were flying.
Piastri lifted off for around 2.8s until he passed the next green flag.
The incident? Brazilian debutant Rafael Câmara had crashed — behind him.
Unfortunately for Piastri, he hadn’t left the yellow marshalling sector, and he was required to slow despite obviously being out of danger.
Comparing his fastest lap to Norris’s fastest lap, also on intermediates at a similar time, the 2.8s lift cost him around half a second.
Half a second, though, would have been enough only to move him up from 12th to 11th, still knocking him out in Q2.
Given Lewis Hamilton qualified directly ahead of him but is starting from the back of the grid with an engine penalty anyway, it would have made no difference to his grid position, which is 10th after Charles Leclerc serves his 10-place grid penalty from fourth.
Instead the time loss that put him behind unlikely Q3 qualifiers Oliver Bearman, Fernando Alonso and Liam Lawson was down to the timing of his switch to intermediate tyres.
These three chancers went early and got the benefit of warmer tyres for their final lap. Piastri struggle for temperature, which would have been behind the big slide he had through Junção.
Of course other drivers got through with tyre changes at the same time, but in wet sessions like these, imperfections add up quickly, and Piastri was left languishing outside the top 10.
“Definitely at the beginning of the session it was tough,” Piastri said. “I think towards the end it was definitely getting easier, but I think we needed a couple of laps to get temperature into the inters, so it was very, very challenging.
“We’ll try and make our way forward tomorrow.”
WEATHER MIXES THE GRID — WILL IT MIX THE RACE?
Sao Paulo’s reputation for generating mixed weather for races delivered — perhaps overdelivered — for qualifying, with thunderstorms rolling in to mix up the order.
The heavens opened just as qualifying started, with the red flags flying less than three minutes after pit lane opened.
The rain was so heavy that many drivers doubted qualifying would resume on Saturday, with Sunday postponement looking likely.
“Extremely challenging,” is how Russell described it.
“The visibility was zero down the straight into turn 4. I was wheel-spinning in fifth gear at over 200km/h — aquaplaning.
“When you’re aquaplaning on the straight and you can’t see in front of you — I’m not even sure what the word is to describe it.”
But after almost 90 minutes, a window in the weather just about long enough to complete qualifying.
It was worth the wait — and worth the mixed grid that will set up a fascinating race.
Norris and Antonelli will share the front row — champion past and present — in what should be a fascinating duel between two cars that looked closely matched in qualifying.
Wet weather is forecast again for the race, albeit not in the biblical quantities that arrived for qualifying. That will certainly spice up that battle.
Liam Lawson will start a remarkable and equal career best third after penalties — and what timing for the Kiwi as speculation hits fever pitch over his contract.
On Thursday Lawson wondered aloud what more he had to do to earn an extension, and he’s lifted the bar yet again.
Nico Hülkenberg, who scored his only pole position here in 2010, will start alongside Lawson in fourth with a remarkable opportunity to inflict some damage on Haas in the battle for seventh in the standings.
Audi is eighth and only four points behind the American-owned team — and each position on the title table is worth almost $15 million.
Haas, though, will start sixth with Oliver Bearman, who was typically strong in qualifying — but debutant teammate Rafael Câmara, who did exceptionally well in tricky conditions despite the crash, will line up 11th for his first start.
Fernando Alonso predictably capitalised on the conditions to qualify eighth in Aston Martin’s first Q3 appearance of the year. The troubled Honda-powered team is only five points behind Williams in the chase for ninth in the standings — a remarkable potential outcome given where the team started.
Alex Albon, though, timed his first Q3 appearance well and will start directly behind him in ninth with a chance to limit that damage — or flip it into some breathing space.
Arguably equally exciting, though, are the drivers starting out of position.
Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, having written a particularly memorable chapter of their 2021 title battle here, will start 20th and 21st respectively with back-of-grid engine change penalties.
In 2021 Hamilton won the grand prix despite being excluded from qualifying for a technical infringement. First he raced from 20th to fifth in the sprint, and he won the grand prix from 10th the following day in a remarkable performance to reassert his title hopes.
In 2024 Verstappen achieved a similar feat, winning from 17th on the grid, albeit with the help of a well-timed red flag.
Both are masters in the wet, and tracking their fortunes through the afternoon — wet or dry — will be a race within a race.
The Sao Paulo Grand Prix reliably delivers, and it’s certainly doing so this season.
Leave a Reply