George Russell takes stunning first career pole

George Russell stunned the field in qualifying in Hungary, taking his first career pole out of the blue with a brilliant final lap in Q3.

Russell and Mercedes had been out-paced by Ferrari throughout the session, before the Briton pulled out a superb lap at the end of Q3 to beat Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc and deny them an all-Ferrari front row for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

There was disappointment at Red Bull though, as Max Verstappen suffered a loss of power in Q3 and will line up 10th, while Sergio Perez was knocked out in Q2 and will start one place behind his team-mate.

Lando Norris and Esteban Ocon both performed well to round out the top five on the grid, while Lewis Hamilton was hampered by a DRS issue on his final run, which left him down in P7.

But the weather forecast was the focus of the pre-session attention, after Nicholas Latifi took a surprise top spot in a wet FP3 hour earlier in the afternoon.

Qualifying started in the dry though, and with dark clouds hanging over the Hungaroring, it is unsurprising that most of the drivers went straight out on track to get laps in the bank in potentially changeable conditions.

This included Sebastian Vettel, whose Aston Martin crew worked at a rate of knots to get his car fixed after his crash in FP3, with the German himself lending a helping hand to his mechanics as they scrambled to get ready in time, and doing so impressively.

Seb helping to fix his own car 😍 #HungarianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/hO0qtSLWAh

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) July 30, 2022

In the scrap to avoid the drop zone towards the end of Q1, lap times quickly tumbled as rubber was relaid and the bottom five changed continually as the clock ticked down – with every driver out on track to try and improve.

But Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon, Vettel, Pierre Gasly and Latifi were those to miss out, in another tough qualifying session for an AlphaTauri team struggling for form.

Gasly lost out on his place in qualifying after his fastest effort was deleted and, while Latifi set the fastest first sector of anyone, a big snap of oversteer out of Turn 14 cost him the time he needed to advance.

Onwards to Q2 though, with Verstappen and Fernando Alonso becoming the first drivers to dip into the 1:17s this weekend, with Perez seemingly having work to do after having his first lap time deleted, but it was later reinstated by the stewards upon further inspection.

But as the Red Bull driver could not improve on his second run, he faced a nervy wait…