Russell assesses ‘frustrating’ P4 Qualifying result in Austin as he admits there was ‘more potential’

George Russell was left feeling that there could have been “more potential” in his performance during Qualifying for the United States Grand Prix, with the Mercedes driver admitting that just missing out on the front row in P4 was “frustrating”.

Off the back of his victory last time out in Singapore, Russell enjoyed a positive outing in Saturday’s Sprint by taking P2, having avoided the melee that unfolded on Lap 1 at the first corner.

The Briton could not quite repeat that outcome in Qualifying, though, meaning that he will line up behind Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc starts alongside him on the second row.

Asked to sum up his emotions at missing out on a spot at the very front, Russell responded: “Frustrating. The truth is [when] I crossed the line, I was pretty happy with my lap.

“Of course there could have been more potential in it, but that’s the case for everybody and especially on a circuit like this. I’ll take it, tomorrow’s a new day. Need to get around Turn 1 – as we saw today, anything’s possible.”

Having started from P5 in the Sprint, Russell was then pushed on whether his climb up to a final result of P2 gave him confidence that he could possibly convert his fourth place on Sunday’s grid into a much higher position.

“Well, the Sprint ended up only being about 10 laps long and tomorrow we’ve got 50-odd laps, and we didn’t see McLaren, so I’m not going to say I’ve got uber amounts of confidence going into tomorrow, but I don’t think we’re in a bad place,” the 27-year-old explained.

On the other side of the Mercedes garage, Kimi Antonelli progressed through to Q3, having missed out on the final segment during Friday’s Sprint Qualifying.

The Italian ultimately claimed seventh place and, when quizzed later on what may have prevented him from going even further, answered: “Lap 1, I had on the main straight… We need to see what happened with the DRS but it didn’t open, so I did the whole straight without DRS and lost a couple of tenths.

“The last lap, the front tyre didn’t really work and I struggled a lot with the understeer. It’s a shame because I was hoping for better, but we look forward to tomorrow.

“We didn’t change so much [between the Sprint and Qualifying], to be honest. Just trying to keep a consistent car and looking on to tomorrow as well, because the wind is going to rotate quite a lot so it’s going to affect a lot the balance. We tried to make the best car for Quali, but as well looking to tomorrow.”