F1 leader Antonelli celebrates dad's birthday with Spa pole

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium, July 18 : Formula One leader Kimi Antonelli celebrated his father's birthday by taking pole position for Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix with Red Bull's Max Verstappen alongside on the front row and Mercedes teammate and title rival George Russell right behind.

McLaren's reigning world champion Lando Norris was third fastest, but has a 10-place grid drop, promoting Russell with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, winner of the previous race at Silverstone, next to him in fourth.

Mercedes have taken pole for all 10 races so far this season and 19-year-old Italian Antonelli has provided six of them.

"Nice birthday present for your old man," his race engineer Peter 'Bono' Bonnington said over the team radio.

"Yeah, happy birthday dad," replied the happy Italian.

ITALIAN HUNGRY FOR SIXTH WIN

"It was not a very straightforward session, the track changed a lot," Antonelli told reporters later. "But tomorrow is another day and obviously I have Max starting next to me so it's going to be important to get a good start and then be ahead into Turn Five."

The Italian has won five races so far and leads Russell by 25 points in the championship. He is hungry for another win to stretch that advantage after failing to score in two of the last three races.

Norris had been on provisional pole after the first flying laps but then Verstappen and Antonelli went faster, the latter producing a one minute and 44.361 second effort around the longest and second-fastest lap on the calendar. 

"It is nice to be standing here, it is not nice knowing I have to go 10 places back tomorrow," commented Norris.

"It is unfortunate that it is not where we will be starting tomorrow because it would be nice to have a little fight with these guys but we