Home 1-2-3 as George Russell takes pole at Silverstone

George Russell delivered for his home crowd by landing a brilliant pole position for the British Grand Prix.

The Englishman held his nerve in a wet-dry qualifying session at Silverstone to see off team-mate Lewis Hamilton by 0.171 seconds as Mercedes locked out the front row.

McLaren's Lando Norris completed a British one-two-three ahead of an anticipated 160,000 sell-out crowd for Sunday’s race.

Championship leader Max Verstappen, who ran through the gravel in Q1, sustaining possible damage to the floor of his Red Bull, could manage only fourth.

The build-up to Formula One’s third round in as many weeks has been dominated by Norris’ late collision with Verstappen as they duelled for the lead in Austria six days ago.

Russell took advantage of the coming together to claim just his second career win and the 26-year-old was back on top at Silverstone to land pole for his home race.

Russell held a six-thousandths advantage over Norris heading into the final runs only to see Hamilton charge to the top of the order.

But Russell denied the seven-time world champion his first pole since the Hungarian Grand Prix last year – 350 days ago – to put his machine on pole. Norris failed to improve his with last lap, finishing 0.211 sec back.

"What a feeling," said Russell. "At the start of this year we couldn’t have even dreamt of being on pole.

"The car at the moment is feeling so good, it really came alive, and what a joy to ride around this circuit.

"The crowd give us so much energy, and I don’t think Silverstone could’ve dreamt of three Brits in the top three."

Hamilton said: "We definitely didn’t expect to be on the front row this weekend but this is huge for us as a team. The car felt fantastic out there."

Norris, 81 points behind Verstappen