George Russell hopes his first Q3 appearance with Williams sends another reminder to Mercedes of "what I can do".
After missing out on the top 10 by just 0.008s a week ago, this time the Briton was 0.006s on the right side of the cut-off point for Q3, beating the two Ferraris as a result.
From there, Russell went on to beat Lance Stroll for P9 with Sebastian Vettel's three-place grid penalty later promoting him to a P8 start for the Austrian Grand Prix.
“It really felt like a pole position for us to get us into Q3,” he said. "The most pumped up I’ve been since I last won a race probably.
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"I’m really pleased for the whole team; we’ve managed to keep the momentum going and this is thoroughly deserved after the struggle."
Of course, last Sunday, Russell was running P8 before power unit issues saw him frustratingly retire, but the opportunity for his first points with Williams this weekend now appears even better thanks to his tyre strategy.
“It is one thing [to reach Q3] but to do it on mediums is massive," he claimed.
"We were obviously debating prior to the session in which order we do Q2, whether it was soft then medium or vice versa, but we were pretty adamant we didn’t want to go into the top 10 on soft.
“We’re in an amazing position with the AlphaTauri ahead of us on the soft, Stroll and Seb behind us on the soft too.
“We think that tyre is going to be disastrous in the race – seems like they know something we don’t, hopefully they don’t. But we’ve got flexibility with the strategy whereas those guys are pretty locked in.”
Russell's latest achievement comes on the day Lewis Hamilton re-signed at Mercedes on a two-year deal, and Toto Wolff later revealing a decision on the second seat will be made during the summer break.
"It's not even playing on my mind," Russell insisted. "I'm just week in, week out - I just want to show what I can do, to everybody and to myself, to Williams and Mercedes.
"Hopefully this just adds to that."
