Russell puts Mercedes on pole at Las Vegas and Verstappen nips Norris in championship battle

LAS VEGAS — George Russell put Mercedes on the pole for the Las Vegas Grand Prix in an upset over teammate Lewis Hamilton, who had been considered the favorite but struggled in Friday night's final qualifying session.

“It feels incredible to be back on pole, we've been so quick all weekend,” Russell said of the fourth pole of his career. “But I'm just so happy and we've got to do some deep diving to find out why we've been so quick because it's been a bit of a surprise.”

Hamilton was fastest in the first two practice sessions of the weekend with Russell fastest in Friday night's third and final session. But come qualifying, Hamilton made two mistakes in the final group and wound up a distant 10th as Russell will lead the field to green in Saturday night's race.

Russell snagged the top starting spot at the buzzer after Ferrari drivers Carlos Sainz Jr. and Charles Leclerc seemed to sweep the front row. Russell's late lap then pushed Sainz to second, Pierre Gasly slid into third, and Leclerc wound up fourth.

“That was a tight quali, a bit closer to pole than what I was expecting, I thought I had pole and then George came very, very quick at the end,” Sainz said. “We need to stay confident that tomorrow we could be fighting closer to the front even more than today so that tomorrow we might have a chance at going for the win and that will be the target.”

Championship leader Max Verstappen of Red Bull qualified fourth. Verstappen needs only to score three points more than challenger Lando Norris on Saturday night to win his fourth consecutive world championship, and the McLaren driver qualified sixth.

Verstappen had struggled much of the weekend as Red Bull used an incorrect setup on the rear wings of its two cars but claimed the issues had been corrected in time for qualifying.

But the fix didn't help Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, who was knocked out of the first group of qualifying for the sixth time this season and will start 16th on Saturday night in Red Bull's uphill fight to remain in the race for the constructor championship. The two-time reigning constructor winners are third in the standings with three races remaining.

“Unbelievable, it doesn't get any better,” Perez said on his radio. “I can't find any grip.”

He later said Las Vegas has been a struggle for Red Bull.

“The whole weekend I've been struggling quite a lot with the grip. It is really hard to put a lap together,” he said. “I did expect a very difficult qualifying and it turned out to be quite a tough one.”

Franco Colapinto, one of the drivers sometimes mentioned as a possible replacement at Red Bull for Perez, had his own miserable qualifying session when he crashed hard into the wall as the second qualifying group came to a close. The contact completely destroyed his Williams less than 24 hours before the start of the race.

In addition to delaying the start of the the third session, the crash may have impacted Colapinto's future on the F1 grid. He also crashed during the last race at Brazil when, running 16th, he crashed coming onto the main straight as the field was under safety car conditions due to rain.

Although unhurt, the incident cost Williams millions of dollars in damage and the Las Vegas crash only added to the growing total. Colapinto was a midseason replacement for Logan Sargeant, who was fired for underperforming, and will be replaced at Williams next year by Sainz.

He'd overperformed in two of his six races with the team by finishing in the points, but the former F2 driver is now hurting his chances to land an F1 seat in 2025.

Williams took a second hit when Alex Albon also failed to advance out of the first qualifying group.