Russell determined to convert maiden pole: There's no points for qualifying

George Russell was reluctant to focus too much on his first F1 pole position, but instead wanted to turn his attention to converting the place into a strong race result. On his 13th outing for Mercedes at the Hungaroring, the Briton took an against-the-odds first F1 pole position ahead of the Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc. Speaking after a remarkable qualifying result, Russell highlighted the contrast between Mercedes' practice and qualifying pace and spoke of the team's "toughest Friday" of the season. "I'm not really thinking about myself to be honest, but for us as a team it's massive," Russell told media, including RacingNews365.com . "Yesterday was probably our toughest Friday of the whole season. We were all here until 11pm last night scratching our heads, morale was pretty down, and we felt pretty lost. "To come back and grab pole position 24 hours later, it's just such a feeling, because I know what we went through last night. "There's no points for qualifying, but getting this result for all of us is pretty huge."

Russell: We just nailed our final run

With the Red Bull pairing of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez out of the running for pole position, Ferrari became the firm favourites in qualifying for the Hungarian GP, prior to Russell delivering his spectacular lap. When asked what changes had been made to the Mercedes car between practice and qualifying, Russell believed tyre preparation had been key to their qualifying performance. "I think today we just got it perfectly in the window on that last lap," Russell added. "I went round Turn 1 and I was a tenth-and-a-half up, went round Turn 2 and I was three-tenths up, and everything was just perfectly in the window. "When you're on one of those laps, and you're in the groove and in a rhythm, it just keeps on coming. "I think everybody struggled quite a lot of tyres. A lot of people struggled in the morning in the wet with the tyres, and we've been going all over the place to try and get our heads around it. "Fortunately, we sort of nailed it on that last run."