Russell pleased to put past behind him with summer 'reset'

There had been mutterings behind the scenes that George Russell had lost his edge and was no longer a match for his Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton after a number of recent disappointing outings before the summer shutdown.

But the 25-year-old Briton put such chatter behind him by returning from the break revitalised, as shown by his performance in today's qualifying session for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

After a quiet time on Friday where he was only P14 in second practice, Russell showed his true colours in this morning's wet final practice where he was second quickest behind Max Verstappen.

And he maintained that momentum into a tricky qualifying session where he was in the top six throughout, and punched in a final lap good enough to secure him third place and a spot on the second row for tomorrow's start.

While not one to take pleasure in the misfortune of others, Russell's success contrasted with problems for his team mate who failed to make it into the final round after getting caught in traffic in his final Q2 run.

"Quali was one of my strengths at the start of the year and it has been going a little bit wrong recently, so it was good to have that break," he told the media in parc ferme.

• Read also: Verstappen beats Norris to pole in wet Dutch GP qualifying

"We came here with a fresh set of ideas, a reset and a good place to fight for a podium," he continued. "[It was] a great session, and I'm really happy to be here in P3."

"We're pleased with the P3 start position for George and naturally disappointed we couldn't get Lewis further up," noted Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

"We were struggling for temperature on intermediate tyres in the morning session. George managed to get on top of this, but Lewis was not particularly happy with his balance and finding it hard to build heat in the tyres."

Even so, Russell was still over seven tenths off the pace of pole sitter Max Verstappen at the end of qualifying, meaning that it will take a lot of luck to put him in the running for victory in tomorrow's race.

More realistically he will be fighting with McLaren's Lando Norris for P2 while ensuring that Williams' Alex Albon doesn't gain an early advantage at lights out, starting alongside him on the grid from fourth place.

"Max will be having his Sunday drive and waving to the crowd on his way," Russell quipped. "But hopefully we can have a good fight with Alex, Lando and the rest of them.

"We know that we struggle to get temperature into the tyres when it's wet or the crossover to slicks, but that also turns into a strength on Sunday," he said. "Saturday's weakness is a strength on Sunday, so it should be an exciting race."

Mercedes principal Toto Wolff made clear the objectives he was setting for Russell in tomorrow's race: "George got the maximum from it [in qualifying] to take a second row, so I hope he will be racing for the podium tomorrow."

"We're expecting conditions to improve for tomorrow," contributed Shovlin. "Our long run pace looked reasonable on Friday so hopefully we can move forward with both drivers."

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