Russell was 0.227secs quicker than Antonelli and has an opportunity in Saturday’s shorter sprint race – which runs to about a third of the distance of a grand prix – to cut back into the Italian’s points advantage.
He added: “It has been a little while since I was top of the timesheets in any session. I can’t even remember the last time. It was good to remind myself I can still drive and the break came at a good point.
“But it’s still just the sprint and the main qualifying will be the key one. McLaren look really fast. Ferrari look quick. It has been a surprise to us as a team the last couple of races but we are in a good spot.
“I came into this weekend with a real open mind because I had no idea how it was doing to go.
“Confidence level wasn’t exactly at my highest but just trying to remember the feeling I need from myself and the car and try to treat it like the first race of the season and not overthink things.”
Norris, winner of the last race before the summer break in Hungary, said he felt he could have taken pole position had he got the most out of the soft tyres used on the final runs in the session.
“Really happy,” Norris said. “Still a good position. It was a reasonable lap, a good qualifying, close between all the teams, which is exactly what we expected. But a little bit disappointing to be P2 rather than P1.”
Leclerc, himself just 0.055secs off pole, was happy with what he described as his “best qualifying lap of the year”.
His team-mate Hamilton, meanwhile, said: “Not a good session, unfortunately. P1 felt good. We made subtle adjustments to the car but it was a completely different car when we got into qualifying. We need to figure out what went wrong and then do our best tomorrow.”
Antonelli paid the price for an error in the first session when he went off into the gravel on entry to the final corner.
“I had a couple of holes in the floor,” Antonelli said. “Initially they said a loss of 25 points [of downforce]. They tried to repair [it] but definitely the damage was still there. A little bit too much entry speed into the last corner and went into the gravel.”
