George Russell maintained his perfect record in the qualifying head-to-head with team-mate Robert Kubica, leading the ROKiT Williams Racing duo in Qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix – the 1000th race in history of the Formula One World Championship tomorrow.

Making his first driving appearance at the Shanghai International Circuit, George spent the opening Free Practice sessions learning the track and dialling in his FW42 to the unique demands of the circuit on high-fuel running and single-lap running.

Following the final Free Practice session, the team looked a good step closer to the rest of the pack relative to the previous two races – showing good progress as they headed into Qualifying.

George and Robert both completed three runs in the session, which saw George improve with every run on the Soft compound Pirelli Tyres.

His best time of a 1:35.253 was enough to put him a season-best P17 on the grid – one position ahead of team-mate Kubica.
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‍George Russell - ROKiT Williams Racing Driver:‍

"Starting P17 is definitely higher than we expected going into this weekend. It was a fairly decent session; we are getting closer to everybody else and as a team we are slightly more competitive.
We are understanding the car better and getting more out of the set-up which has enabled us to find some lap time. We will go out and give it everything tomorrow and see what we can do."

‍Dave Robson - ROKiT Williams Racing Senior Race Engineer:‍

"Following some useful testing in FP3, we had another busy qualifying session as each driver completed three runs. The trackside team of engineers and mechanics, with help from the strategists back in Grove, did a very good job of getting both drivers into good positions on track for all runs.
The drivers also did a good job, and although there are always things that we could’ve done a little better, together we got almost all of what the car had to offer today."

George will be taking part in a notable part of sporting history tomorrow, when the 1,000th Formula One Grand Prix starts at 07:10 (BST).

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Photographs Courtesy of XPB Images

Additional Press Content Courtesy of ROKiT Williams Racing