Mercedes driver George Russell will sit on the pole when the second Las Vegas Grand Prix starts Saturday at 10 p.m.
Russell’s 1:32.312 was good enough to hold off Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly for the top spot.
“It feels incredible to be back on pole. We’ve been so quick all weekend, and I just knew coming into that last Q3 lap, that’s going to be the one that counts. It doesn’t matter what’s happened before then,” Russell said to reporters via the F1 website. “And I had a bit of a moment on my first run, and we had to change the front wing. So there was a moment I thought we weren’t going to make the flag. But just so happy and, you know, we’ve got to do some deep diving to understand why it’s been so quick so far this weekend because it was a real surprise.”
Defending Las Vegas Grand Prix champion Max Verstappen will start fifth after posting a 1:32.797 time in qualifying.
“The day started off quite tough but we did our best and maximised everything that we could. The tyres are our main issue as we were struggling quite a lot with the grip throughout the day. Our long runs have not been that great and we were too slow on the straight,” Verstappen said via the F1 website. “However, I think we did execute everything really well in qualifying and worked well as a Team. I am ultimately happy with how it went; I left everything out there and we ended up in P5. Everything looks a lot better than yesterday and hopefully with the things that we changed on the car, we are a bit more competitive tomorrow in the race. Let’s hope that the changes will make an impact and we can put together a good performance tomorrow.”
Verstappen leads Lando Norris, by 62 points and can potentially clinch the driver’s World Championship in Las Vegas.
Paul Delos Santos is the Las Vegas sports insider for Dice City Sports. Follow him on X at @PaulDelos_.
