George Russell has been aptly named 'Mr. Saturday' by F1's establishment, a well-deserved moniker linked to his impressive performances in qualifying.
Over the course of his three years with Williams, Russell was only outqualified twice by his teammate, with that honour falling on Nicholas Latifi last year after 56 races.
The Briton's performances on Saturday afternoons frequently exceeded his machine's potential while his track record includes a pair of incursions into Q3 – including a front-row start in Belgium last year.
So what's the secret behind Russell's pace in F1's grid-defining sessions?
"It’s the high-pressure stakes of qualifying; you go out there, you’ve got one lap to do the business, the pressure is on and the world’s watching," Russell told Crash.net.
"It just excites me and I thrive on that pressure to go out there and deliver. I think for a lot of drivers, it’s the most exciting part of the weekend. It’s when your car is at its fastest and when everything is on the line.
"It’s like a sprint, [with] the race being more of a marathon, managing it to the end. You can’t sprint every lap of a race because you’d be burned out, you’d tire the engine and the brakes.
"But qualifying you are not holding anything back, you are unleashing everything and that’s what I enjoy."
And nothing beats the adrenaline rush a driver feels in the heat of a qualifying moment says Russell who equates the experience to an "incredible rollercoaster ride".
"That feeling when you’ve managed to accomplish something special over one lap is pure elation and the adrenaline is absolutely pumping because it’s all on the line for such a short period of time," he said.
"It’s sort of just being at one with the car. You need faith and confidence in the car. You need it to react as you want it to and you just feel like you are on this rollercoaster ride, going as fast as possible and everything else is blurred out.
"You are focused on one thing and that is corner after corner after corner and just going as fast as possible. It truly feels like you are just on this rollercoaster going for an incredible ride, the fastest ride of your life.
"Every single weekend it feels like this. When you do a great job, the adrenaline is there, so it’s like you are in control of this marvellous rollercoaster ride."
Russell considers raw speed as a critical facture in a driver's ability to perform in qualifying, but he insists that's it's not the only element that makes up the ultimate flyer.
"I think as a driver your natural speed probably doesn’t improve much from the age of 16, 17 to the rest of your career," he explained.
"You become faster because you learn how to work with the team better, how to get more out of your car, from the technical aspects, how do I get my tyres working in a better window to make them go faster on track?
"These are all things you obviously learn with experience and I think I’ve progressed a huge amount.
"So I am definitely a faster driver today than I was three years ago. Not from my natural ability, but more from the things you learn technically along the way."
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