George Russell said that successfully making it through to the final round of qualifying for this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix was the closest thing to a pole position that the Williams team could have hoped for.
Russell has been making regular appearances in Q2 this season and came within a whisker of getting through to the top ten pole shootout in last week's Styrian GP at the same venue.
But this week's success was especially sweet as it was achieved entirely on merit without benefitting from any incidents, and done on a set of the slower medium tyres that others were struggling to work with.
"Qualifying was pretty special; we usually do well on Saturdays but that was on another level," Russell enthused in the Red Bull Ring paddock. "It really felt like a pole position.
"I’m really pleased for the whole team; we’ve managed to keep the momentum going and this is thoroughly deserved after the struggle.
"Getting into Q3 is one thing, but doing so on the medium tyre is massive," he added. "We were obviously debating prior to the session in which order we do the Q2 - whether it's the soft first followed by the medium, or vice-versa.
"But we were pretty adamant we didn't want to go in the top 10 on the softs," he said. "To manage to pull that off almost feels like a pole position."
The last time that a Williams qualified in the top ten was in the 2018 Italian Grand Prix. However Russell started from tenth last week after his initial 11th place was upgraded as the result of a grid penalty handed to AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda.
Russell was running in eighth place during the opening laps of that race before a pneumatic pressure issue on the car forced him to retire before the midway point. The team last scored a championship point in the 2019 German GP.
This week Russell successfully qualified in ninth place, and he might benefit from another grid boost if Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel is handed a penalty for impeding Fernando Alonso during qualifying.
"I had a lot of confidence in the car, which really helped when it came to nailing my Q3 lap with only one shot. P9 in any circumstances is a great place to be.
"[It's] the most pumped up I've been since I last won a race [in Formula 2], probably," Russell commented. "We're in an amazing position with the AlphaTauris ahead of us on the soft, [Lance] Stroll and probably Sebastian behind us on the softs too.
"If we did that last stint on the soft it would have been really tricky," he suggested. "Like I said, we don't think we wanted to be on that soft.
"We think that tyre is going to be disastrous in the race. It seemed like they know something we don't! Hopefully they don't.
"We've got flexibility to do as we wish with the strategy, whereas I think those guys are pretty locked in."
"Starting on the mediums with a few cars ahead on the soft tyres puts us in a strong position for the race and hopefully gives us a real advantage when it comes to making strategy decisions."
With Lewis Hamilton signing a contract extension at mercedes this weekend, all eyes are on who the team will choose to partner him - with Russell in pole position for promotion in place of Valtteri Bottas.
"It's not even playing on my mind," Russell insisted. "I'm just week in, week out - I just want to show what I can do, to everybody and to myself, to Williams and Mercedes.
"Hopefully this just adds to that."
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