George Russell suffered gearbox gremlins – allowing his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli to become the youngest pole-sitter in Formula One history.
The Silver Arrows pair still locked out the front row for the Chinese Grand Prix, just not in the expected order.
At 19 years, six months and 17 days, Italian Antonelli thrashed the record set by Sebastian Vettel at 21 years, two months and 11 days. That benchmark had stood for 18 years, dating back to Monza in 2008 when the German drove for Toro Rosso.
Lewis Hamilton cheered loudest of all, qualified third, beating his Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc by a place. Next came the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
Russell, who won the sprint race earlier in the day to open up his championship lead to 11 points from Antonelli and Leclerc, laboured all qualifying – a difficult session for him.
‘Something is not right with the car,’ he said early on. ‘I have major understeer, as if the front wing is broken.’
George Russell (left) had to settle for second on the grid, between Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton
Then the technical problems that saw him come to a standstill in Q3. ‘I can’t shift through the gears,’ he complained. Asked if the car was all right by race engineer Marcus Dudley, he responded: ‘It isn’t.’
He went into the garage for remedial work and came out with just two minutes of qualifying left. He put in a decent lap under pressure but ended up 0.222sec off Antonelli’s pace.
‘Definitely damage limitation,’ said Russell afterwards. ‘The team did a good job to get us in this position. It could have been a lot worse.’
Pretty much inevitably, the bottom six consisted of the two cars from each of Williams, Aston Martins and Cadillac.
The new regs have cast this trio adrift – or indeed they have cast themselves adrift. Last on the list was Sergio Perez, nearly four seconds behind the Q1 pace-setter Russell.
Cadillac have the excuse of being new on the grid. Alas, WIlliams and Aston Martin, however, have to live with the harsh realisation that this was meant to be their big chance, the challenge they were building towards. Their hopes have already fallen to the ground.
