‘Today wasn’t a good day’ – Russell says Mercedes were ‘definitely not’ in pole fight during Austin Sprint Qualifying

George Russell believes that Mercedes were “definitely not” in with a chance of claiming pole position during Sprint Qualifying at the United States Grand Prix, the Briton instead suggesting that the squad’s fight is for P4 after claiming fifth on the grid.

Arriving into the event off the back of his victory last time out in Singapore – plus the recent confirmation that he will remain as a Silver Arrows driver in 2026 – Russell was not quite able to reach those heights on Friday at the Circuit of The Americas.

After ending FP1 in seventh place on the timesheets, the 27-year-old had to settle for P5 in Sprint Qualifying, meaning that he lines up behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri plus the Kick Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg.

When asked if he had gotten the maximum out of his car during the session, Russell answered: “No, but could we have been on pole? Definitely not. Nico did an amazing lap to go P4, I think that was a real surprise so congrats to him.

“As we have been saying all year, on the good days we are in the fight, on the bad days we are P5 and today wasn’t a good day. We just got P5. Sprint races are tricky sometimes.”

While Russell is more optimistic about how the W16 will fare in race trim, the five-time race winner was honest about where he expects the team to be battling.

“I think potentially we have a better race car than Qualifying car,” he explained. “We are struggling a lot in the high-speed, so when you are going a bit slower in the race through the high-speed and the car isn’t as low to the ground, could be a bit faster. But yeah, I think this is roughly where we are at, in the fight for P4.”

Russell’s team mate Kimi Antonelli – who was also confirmed to remain with Mercedes in 2026 this week – just missed out on progressing to SQ3, having been knocked out of SQ2 by only 0.006s.

“It is obviously very disappointing because SQ1 felt good,” the rookie said after Sprint Qualifying. “Just in SQ2 I struggled with locking, I had two big lock-ups in the lap and lost quite a lot of time.

“Obviously [I’m] very disappointed because we had the pace to be in SQ3 today. Now we focus on tomorrow as a new day.

“This morning, I struggled a bit in the car because I had a few physical issues, but the car felt good to be honest. In SQ2 I was confident, I just need to figure out why I struggled so much with locking. But tomorrow is a new day.”

Elaborating further on the “physical issues”, Antonelli went on to explain that this involved a failure in his cooling vest – a device that drivers are permitted to use if they wish this weekend due to a ‘heat hazard’ being declared.