Tight Sprint Qualifying Sets Up Exciting Weekend at Silverstone

• Kimi Antonelli will line up in P2 with George Russell P5 for Saturday’s Sprint at Silverstone.

• A record-breaking crowd is expected over the weekend at the home of British motorsport and the stands were packed for the solitary hour of practice that opened the three-day event.

• Kimi ended FP1 P2 with George P4 with the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc looking particularly quick.

• That form continued into Sprint Qualifying with the Italian marque continuing to impress.

• Both George and Kimi successfully navigated their way through to SQ3 and completed one lap on the Soft tyre.

• Kimi was in the fight for pole throughout but fell just 0.011s short of top spot; the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton leading the way with Max Verstappen P3 and Charles Leclerc P4.

• George will head up the third row of the grid in P5 as the field returns to Silverstone tomorrow for a 19-lap Sprint.

Kimi Antonelli

Sprint Qualifying was incredibly close and it's frustrating to miss out on pole by such a small margin. I didn't feel completely comfortable in the car during SQ1, but then SQ2 felt like night and day difference. The balance came to me much more and I was able to get back into the rhythm and show the pace we had.

My lap in SQ3 was a solid but Lewis did a great job, so congratulations to him. We can be happy with the progress we made throughout the session and now the focus is fully on tomorrow. It’s clear that Ferrari, and the rest of the competition, have made a lot of progress so we know we’re in for a real fight. That’s exactly the sort of challenge we enjoy though; we have the opportunity to fight for the Sprint win, and we'll be going for it. We know we have all the ingredients we need to have a strong race and we'll do everything we can to maximise the result.

George Russell

We've often managed to find a step when it comes to the final part of qualifying, but unfortunately that wasn't the case today. We weren’t too far off P3, but we were still lacking a bit of pace compared to Kimi (Antonelli) and Lewis (Hamilton), so we need to understand where we can improve. The car didn't feel too bad and the balance was reasonably good but ultimately the lap time just wasn't there when it mattered.

I was a little bit surprised by Ferrari’s pace as, on paper, this wouldn’t necessarily be their strongest circuit. Clearly, they have made a strong step forward and they looked competitive throughout the day. They had the upper hand from the first session onwards, so we've got some work to do overnight to see if we can close that gap and put ourselves in the fight tomorrow.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Today has been frustrating on our side. We've had a good run of landing the start set-up in a decent place in recent races, but it has felt like we've been on the back foot today. Over the course of the sessions, we've been making changes to put more stability into the car but even by the SQ3 of Sprint Qualifying, it still felt that the front was still too strong, which is not what you need when it's so gusty.

On top of that, we have a speed difference that we need to understand that was costing us a decent amount of time on the straights. We can't make changes ahead of the Sprint tomorrow but we're working hard to get on top of these issues and find a better compromise with the set-up ahead of Grand Prix Qualifying tomorrow.

FP1 Result

Sprint Qualifying Result