Russell put Mercedes on pole for the 2026 Australian F1 Grand Prix

George Russell set a 1:18.518 to claim the first pole position of the 2026 Formula 1 season at the Australian Grand Prix, leading almost three-tenths of a second over Kimi Antonelli in a Mercedes 1-2 that confirms the Brackley team as the best prepared for the new regulatory era. Isack Hadjar was third for Red Bull, eight-tenths off the pace, while defending champion Lando Norris could manage no better than sixth place.

Nothing that happened on Friday at Albert Park foreshadowed what Mercedes would do in qualifying. Russell and Antonelli had finished seventh and eighth in FP1, more than a second behind Charles Leclerc, and the team openly admitted they had setup issues that needed resolving overnight.

What they found between sessions transformed the W16 completely, because already in FP2, Antonelli was the first driver of the weekend to dip below 1:20 and Russell placed in the top three, an improvement that continued in FP3 when Russell set the fastest time of the session and reached its peak in qualifying, where Mercedes' pace was simply in another league. Russell was fastest in all three segments with times of 1:19.507 in Q1, 1:18.934 in Q2 and 1:18.518 in Q3, and his margin over Hadjar in third reached 0.785 seconds, a gap that in today's Formula 1 is enormous and puts Mercedes in a position of strength they haven't enjoyed since 2020.

Photo By Mercedes Benz

"We knew there was potential in the car, but you don't know until you get to the first Saturday of the season," Russell said. "The car really came alive this afternoon, especially when the track temperature dropped. I'm happy to have Kimi here alongside, because the team did an incredible job to deliver this car."

Antonelli had a complicated Saturday in the literal sense, because his car suffered extensive damage from a crash in FP3 and repairs could only be completed thanks to the extra time provided by the red flag caused by Max Verstappen in Q1. In Q3, a loss of control in turn 3 ruined his first attempt, but his final lap of 1:18.811 comfortably placed him second and confirmed that Mercedes' advantage didn't depend on a single driver. One pending detail is that he is under investigation because his Mercedes was released from the pits with a cooling fan still installed on the sidepods, which came off on track and forced another red flag when Norris drove over the debris.

The lock-up that left Verstappen last

Verstappen's qualifying lasted less than a lap because when braking for turn 1 on what was supposed to be his first fast lap in Q1, the rear axle of the RB22 locked up and sent him through the gravel and into the barrier. "The car locked up from the rear axle. Fantastic," he reported over the radio with a sarcasm that summed up the accumulated frustration of a Saturday where nothing went right for him.

The problems had been brewing earlier, because in FP2 he had only done 13 laps due to a technical issue that kept him in the garage for 25 minutes, and his last fast lap of that session ended with a trip through the gravel at turn 10 that damaged the floor, so Red Bull arrived at qualifying with less data than any other front-running team and without a car in condition to perform at its maximum.

With the RB22 destroyed and no time recorded, Verstappen will start twentieth out of 22 cars in what is the worst possible start for a four-time champion who now faces a recovery drive from the back of the grid. Red Bull will need an extraordinary effort of rebuilding and setup work before Sunday's race.

Hadjar, third in his first qualifying with Red Bull

The other side of Red Bull was Hadjar, who in his first qualifying session as a Formula 1 driver secured third place with a 1:19.303, almost half a second ahead of Leclerc and Oscar Piastri, with a consistent progression that took him from a 1:20.023 in Q1 to improving by more than seven-tenths for Q3.

To put what he did in perspective, no teammate of Verstappen at Red Bull had qualified among the top three since Sergio Pérez achieved it at the Belgian Grand Prix 2024. Almost two full seasons passed without the second Milton Keynes car getting into the top 3 of a qualifying session, and Hadjar achieved it in his first opportunity as a full-time driver, a result that gives Red Bull a fighting position for the race even if Mercedes' advantage makes a direct fight for victory difficult to imagine.

Photo By Mercedes Benz

McLaren and Ferrari didn't find the answer

Oscar Piastri had been fastest on Friday with a 1:19.729 in FP2, but on Saturday what had looked like an open fight between four teams turned into a Mercedes monologue because both McLaren and Ferrari arrived at qualifying convinced they could fight for pole and neither managed to even get close to the front row.

Norris's case sums up McLaren's frustration well. An energy deployment issue on his first Q3 attempt cost him time that he could never recover, and his final lap of 1:19.475 left him almost a second behind Russell, in sixth place. Rob Marshall, McLaren's chief designer, had warned on Friday that energy management remained the team's biggest challenge with these new cars, and qualifying proved him right in the most painful way possible. Piastri, fifth with a 1:19.380, couldn't do much more with a car that on Friday had seemed capable of fighting for pole.

Ferrari encountered a similar problem as Leclerc finished fourth and Lewis Hamilton seventh, both more than eight-tenths off pole, and Hamilton's strategy of running medium tires in Q1 to save soft compound sets yielded no dividends when it mattered most. What had looked like a real competitive advantage on Friday evaporated in less than 24 hours, and both teams head into Sunday knowing they urgently need to find performance if they want to fight with Mercedes.

Serious problems for the lower part of the grid

If the fight at the front was dictated by Mercedes' pace, the lower part of the grid was conditioned by mechanical issues that left several teams with no real chance to compete. Aston Martin remains trapped in the battery crisis they've carried since pre-season, a hardware problem that cannot be fixed with aerodynamic changes or overnight work, and which left Fernando Alonso 3.4 seconds behind Russell with barely 10 laps in the entire qualifying session before being eliminated in Q1 and Lance Stroll unable to leave the garage throughout the session. With a gap like that, a front-running car would lap them in less than 25 race laps.

Cadillac experienced a first Formula 1 weekend far below expectations, with Pérez 4.0 seconds and Valtteri Bottas 4.7 seconds off pole, deficits that over race distance would put them at risk of losing more than two laps to the leader if the pace remained in that range. Carlos Sainz also couldn't participate for Williams due to a technical issue carried over from FP3, so three of the 22 cars on the grid never recorded a qualifying time.

Further up the grid, Audi had a bittersweet qualifying because Gabriel Bortoleto did the necessary work to advance to Q3 but a technical issue at the pit entry prevented him from setting a time in the final segment, leaving him tenth without completing a lap in a missed opportunity that hurts because the pace was there. Racing Bulls was the team that best capitalized on their Saturday outside of Mercedes, with Liam Lawson eighth and Arvid Lindblad ninth, although Lindblad's Q3 lap didn't reflect his real pace because he lost more than a second in the middle sector.

The Australian Grand Prix race starts Sunday at 15:00 local time in Melbourne.

Qualifying

Pos	Nº	Piloto	Equipo	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	#63	George Russell	Mercedes	1:18.518	1:18.518	1:18.518
2	#12	Kimi Antonelli	Mercedes	1:18.811	1:18.811	1:18.811
3	#6	Isack Hadjar	Red Bull Racing	1:19.303	1:19.303	1:19.303
4	#16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1:19.327	1:19.327	1:19.327
5	#81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	1:19.380	1:19.380	1:19.380
6	#1	Lando Norris	McLaren	1:19.475	1:19.475	1:19.475
7	#44	Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	1:19.478	1:19.478	1:19.478
8	#30	Liam Lawson	Racing Bulls	1:19.994	1:19.994	1:19.994
9	#41	Arvid Lindblad	Racing Bulls	1:19.971	1:21.247	1:21.247
10	#5	Gabriel Bortoleto	Audi	1:20.221	1:35.536	-
11	#27	Nico Hulkenberg	Audi	1:20.303	1:22.860	-
12	#87	Oliver Bearman	Haas F1 Team	1:20.311	-	-
13	#31	Esteban Ocon	Haas F1 Team	1:20.491	-	-
14	#10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine	1:20.501	1:20.826	-
15	#23	Alexander Albon	Williams	1:20.941	-	-
16	#43	Franco Colapinto	Alpine	1:21.200	-	-
17	#14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin	1:21.969	-	-
18	#11	Sergio Perez	Cadillac	1:22.605	-	-
19	#77	Valtteri Bottas	Cadillac	1:23.244	-	-