Russell claims pole for Dutch F1 sprint as Piastri set to start fourth

Oscar Piastri will start Saturday's F1 sprint race at Zandvoort from fourth on the grid.

George Russell will start the sprint race, held prior to qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix, from pole position.

ABC Sport will have a live blog of the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix from 9pm AEST on Sunday, August 23.

George Russell got back to the front of the Formula 1 field overnight and joked it's because he's no longer carrying an engagement ring.

Russell took the fight to his series-leading Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli as he qualified on pole position for the sprint race at the Dutch Grand Prix. F1 has returned from its mid-season break, two weeks after Russell announced he and his partner Carmen Montero Mundt were engaged.

After setting the fastest time, Russell said over the team radio: "Nice one! Must be a bit lighter after that engagement ring."

Russell previously revealed that "a lot of thought" went into his proposal, including designing the ring itself.

Russell snatched top spot by 0.041 of a second from McLaren's Lando Norris, winner of the last race in Hungary, with Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari, 0.014 further back.

Antonelli was fifth and revealed he had been struggling with damage from a bumpy ride across a gravel trap in the first part of the session. The damage was "a couple of holes in the floor."

His closest championship challenger Lewis Hamilton could manage only seventh for Ferrari.

Pole is especially welcome for Russell, who hasn't won since the Austrian Grand Prix in June and was one of the drivers hardest hit by software quirks in how his Mercedes uses its electrical energy.

"It was a tough end to the first half of the year and I'm really happy to come back," said Russell, who's 59 points off his 19-year-old teammate Antonelli after a near-stall ruined his race in Hungary last month.

After his joke about shedding the weight of the engagement ring, Russell said he had also worked to lose the mental baggage of overthinking.

"Confidence level wasn't exactly at my highest, but just trying to remember that feeling of what I needed from myself and the car and just go in and almost treat it like the first race of the season again and not overthink things," he said.