{"id":44805,"date":"2026-03-07T11:23:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/?p=44805"},"modified":"2026-03-07T11:23:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T05:53:58","slug":"australian-gp-qualifying-russell-tops-q2-as-antonelli-impresses-hulkenberg-and-gasly-among-those-eliminated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/formula-1\/australian-gp-qualifying-russell-tops-q2-as-antonelli-impresses-hulkenberg-and-gasly-among-those-eliminated\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian GP Qualifying: Russell tops Q2 as Antonelli impresses; Hulkenberg and Gasly among those eliminated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The second segment of qualifying at the <strong>Australian Grand Prix<\/strong> concluded with <strong>George Russell<\/strong> setting the fastest time and leading the field into the final pole shootout.<\/p>\n<p>Driving for <strong>Mercedes<\/strong>, Russell clocked a best lap of <strong>1:18.934<\/strong>, finishing comfortably ahead of <strong>Charles Leclerc<\/strong>, who ended the session second. Rookie <strong>Kimi Antonelli<\/strong> continued his strong performance by placing third in Q2, completing an impressive recovery weekend after his earlier crash in FP3.<\/p>\n<p>McLaren\u2019s <strong>Oscar Piastri<\/strong> finished fourth, followed by Red Bull\u2019s <strong>Isack Hadjar<\/strong> and <strong>Lando Norris<\/strong>. Ferrari\u2019s <strong>Lewis Hamilton<\/strong> also progressed comfortably into Q3.<\/p>\n<p>The drivers advancing to Q3 were Russell, Leclerc, Antonelli, Piastri, Hadjar, Norris, Hamilton, Lawson, Bortoleto and Hulkenberg.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, six drivers were eliminated at the end of Q2:<\/p>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th>Position<\/th>\n<th>Driver<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>P11<\/td>\n<td>Nico H\u00fclkenberg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>P12<\/td>\n<td>Oliver Bearman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>P13<\/td>\n<td>Esteban Ocon<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>P14<\/td>\n<td>Pierre Gasly<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>P15<\/td>\n<td>Alexander Albon<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>P16<\/td>\n<td>Franco Colapinto<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>With the field now narrowed to ten drivers, the battle for pole position at the <strong>Albert Park Circuit<\/strong> will be decided in the final Q3 session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second segment of qualifying at the Australian Grand Prix concluded with George Russell setting the fastest time and leading\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":44810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4670,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driver-standings","category-formula-1"],"reading_time":"1 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44811,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44805\/revisions\/44811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}