'I had to look into his data' - George Russell reveals Lewis Hamilton influence for Canada pole

George Russell has revealed that he was forced to look into Lewis Hamilton’s data during FP3 after struggling for pace at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Russell clinched his second F1 career pole position, taking it ahead of Max Verstappen after the pair set identical lap times.

It capped off a remarkable resurgence for Mercedes, which showed outstanding pace throughout practice.

Hamilton topped the timesheets by nearly 0.4s, leading Russell to look into the seven-time world champion’s telemetry to understand how to get faster.

“This morning Lewis was absolutely flying and he was well ahead of me,” Russell said.

“I had to look a lot into his data to try to understand what he was doing differently. And, to be honest, that helped me a huge amount.

“So ahead of this qualifying, I’m just so glad that we could pull it off, because I feel like we really deserve all of this hard work we’ve been putting in.

“And the car has been feeling awesome this weekend.”

It’s been a tough year so far Mercedes, with the team yet to finish on the podium in 2024.

Russell was pleased to show that Mercedes’ hard work back at base is finally paying off.

“Such a buzz,” Russell added. “It’s been a while since we’ve experienced this feeling.

“There is so much hard work going on behind the scenes back at Brackley and Brixworth and it’s been a little while to be able to sort of get back in the fight. It almost felt like all of that hard work hasn’t been paying off.”

Russell believes Mercedes are finally finding a “sweet spot” with their car.

“I think we struggled a lot with understeer before,” he explained. “Last year, we had a lot of oversteer, and we’ve sort of been just trying to find the halfway house between what we had last year and what we had this year.

“And it feels like we’re sort of dialling in that sweet spot right now. It feels like it’s something we’ve been saying for a long time, in all honesty. But really, there is a sense of relief to actually see it translate into pole position.”