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

LAS VEGAS (AP) — 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, the seven-time Formula 1 champion 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.

“The car was feeling great today, and it has been a good weekend up to the final segment of qualifying,” Hamilton said. “I had two bad laps in Q3 and that left us P10. I didn’t get the job done. It’s really disappointing as we definitely had the pace for pole position. It will be difficult starting from where we are in P10, but I will try and get up to the podium.”