George Russell
It feels incredible to be back on pole position. We’ve been so quick all weekend, but I knew that, coming into Q3, it was going to be that last lap that counted and nothing that had happened before mattered. On my first effort, I had a little bit of a moment out of turn five and clipped the wall. The mechanics did a great job to switch the front-wing quickly before our final run, but there was a brief moment where I thought we wouldn’t get back around and make the flag. I felt confident in myself though and knew that if I put together a clean lap that pole was possible and that was what we were able to deliver.
Ultimately though we’ve had a few good qualifying sessions recently and we need to convert them into good results. It will be a long race tomorrow, and there will be plenty of unknowns, but I am hopeful that we can fight for victory. I’m excited for the Grand Prix; it’ll be a great atmosphere on Saturday night racing down the Strip in Las Vegas. I’ll have a good night’s sleep this evening and come back raring to go tomorrow.
Lewis Hamilton
The car was feeling great today, and it has been a good weekend up to the final segment of Qualifying. I was quickest in Q2 but unfortunately, I had two bad laps in Q3 and that left us P10. The conditions were still good, but I didn’t get the job done. It’s really disappointing as we definitely had the pace for pole position today. Congratulations to George who did a great job to take P1. It will be difficult starting from where we are in P10, but I will try and get up to the podium tomorrow. I will be giving it my best to do so.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO
The car has been really strong all weekend. We seem to be able to extract good performance in these cold temperatures, as we saw at Silverstone and Spa earlier in the season, and that has helped us today. Taking pole position is great but it is also a little bittersweet with Lewis in P10. We definitely had the speed to be on the front row with both cars, but I am sure he will bounce back tomorrow.
It is difficult to say how the race will go tomorrow. We saw on Thursday that graining is a risk; nobody has had a proper look at the Hard tyre either, so there are going to be plenty of unknowns. Hopefully our single lap speed translates into race pace, and we have a competitive Grand Prix and fight for victory. Let’s see what we can do.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
We’ve had a fast car all weekend and there was a real possibility of us locking out the front-row. It was a tricky session and George did a great job to take pole position. Lewis had shown fantastic speed throughout and was unlucky to have issues on both his laps in Q3. Unfortunately, that left him P10 for tomorrow.
The car has been working really well on a single lap; that has been the case from the first laps of FP1 all the way through to the final lap of Q3. However, it's a lot harder to read where we will be on long run pace. The graining caused by the cool temperature is dominating the degradation and because some pushed early in their runs in FP2, whilst others managed their tyres, it's hard to know where everything will fall out tomorrow. We will have to be live to how the race is going and react well if we want to fight for victory.
