Mercedes’ strong qualifying has them eying the front in the Australian Grand Prix

With George Russell on the front row and Lewis Hamilton just behind, can Mercedes catch Red Bull in Melbourne?

Looking at that above photo one might understandably believe that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell believe they have something up their sleeves for Red Bull in the Australian Grand Prix.

Just weeks removed from the Bahrain Grand Prix and what Team Principal Toto Wolff called one of their “worst” days of racing, Mercedes now has a car starting in the front row of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix. Russell qualified in P2, behind only Max Verstappen of Red Bull, and Hamilton was just behind his teammate in P3.

“We’re happy with how today went,” said Wolff after qualifying in a statement released to the media, including SBNation. “We needed a little bit of happiness and at least for Saturday, we’ve got some of that.”

Both drivers seemed almost overjoyed at the conclusion of qualifying.

“The lap at the end was right on the limit; I’m a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get pole position. But that’s one of those things in this sport. Your expectations change so quickly; we probably would have been happy with a top five result yesterday but today the car felt awesome,” said Russell. “It goes to show we’ve got potential still to come.”

Hamilton in particular seemed thrilled with the qualifying session, calling it an “amazing” result as he came across the line at the end of Q3:

“This was a totally unexpected result and I’m so happy and grateful for P3. My second lap wasn’t as good as the first one. I did gain a little bit of time in the last sector, but ultimately lost out a little bit at the beginning of the lap. I’m not disappointed though and I’m going to work as hard as I can to try and move forwards tomorrow,” said the seven-time world champion. “I’m proud of the team. We’re all working as hard as we can to get right back up the front, so to be this close to the Red Bull is incredible.”

Hamilton was equally exuberant in the post-qualifying press conferences.

“Oh, yeah. I’m so happy with this. What’s up Melbourne? How are you doing? This is totally unexpected. I’m really, really proud of the team. George did a fantastic job today, so for us to be up on the two front rows is honestly a dream for us,” said Hamilton trackside after qualifying. “We’re all working as hard as we can to get right back up the front and to be this close to the Red Bull is honestly incredible. So I hope tomorrow we can give them a bit of a run for their money. And we hope the weather is good.”

As for whether Mercedes truly can give Red Bull a run for their money, tyre management, the weather, and perhaps a little bit of luck might have a role to play. Still, for Mercedes to be perhaps closing the gap to the Constructors’ leaders has certainly changed the mood around the team for both the present, and the future.

“I think the feeling of the car is not the limitation, to be honest. The car feels pretty decent. It’s probably the best F1 car I’ve ever driven, or raced, sorry – probably excluding the obvious 2020 experience with Mercedes. But we’re just lacking a bit of downforce. We know we’ve made some huge gains over the past two or three weeks in the wind tunnel, and hopefully we’ll be bringing that to the track sooner rather than later,” said Russell in the post-qualifying press conference. “But, you know, this result today is going to give us a huge amount of confidence, regardless of what tomorrow brings, over the course of the next four weeks, because if we can deliver a performance like this with a car that is definitely quite a bit off the pace, it shows good promise for when we bring our first upgrade.”

Yet, both Russell and Hamilton are going to give the Grand Prix their best shot.

“We’ve got to go for it, haven’t we? We’ve got to go for a win. Max is going to be extremely fast, there’s no hiding that. I think it’s difficult to overtake around this circuit, so the start, lap one, is going to be vital – but the Red Bull has extraordinary top speed. So, it’s going to be very difficult to fight with Max,” said Russell. “But let’s see. Let’s see how we get on. We’ve got to do our own race. If the opportunity is there, we will go for it.”

Said Hamilton: “But I mean, I think they generally have… we have to expect they’re going to be a quarter of a second, half a second, at least, quicker than us. But maybe in the tow, maybe we can just about hold on; maybe the fact that there’s two of us and only one Red Bull, maybe with strategy, maybe we can apply some pressure to them. So, we’ll see.”

However, Hamilton had this to add: “Yeah, left plenty of performance on the table, just in the sense of just couldn’t get the tyres really working. So, the second lap was a bit average. But still, I managed to get it up there for the team. And tomorrow I will do better.”

Game on? We will find out in just a few hours.