Wolff expects to grow more grey hair: 'Then comes our famous Turn 4'

After a difficult run of form, Russell once again got back on the right track and claimed pole position for Sunday's Grand Prix. The Mercedes drivers were separated by seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who finished in second place after marginally missing out on the best slot on the grid.

Looking ahead to the start, Mercedes CEO and team principal Wolff expects more grey hair today. Speaking to F1 TV, he said: "I think they’re racing for a championship and Kimi will want to show that he’s the one. George wants a good result to say 'I’m the one, don’t discount me'.

The Austrian added: "Lewis obviously is in such a good frame of mind that he’s going for the win, so I don’t know how this is going to pan out tomorrow. For me, the primary thing is no contact, but they're starting behind each other. Kimi’s going to have a good slipstream – more grey hair!"

Hamilton was a similar situation to Russell and Antonelli's back in 2016, when he locked horns with Nico Rosberg.

Wolff continued with also mentioning that incident. "Get through Turn 1 and 2 and 3! Then comes our famous corner, 4, the right-hander where I’ve already had two cars stranded in the gravel trap in 2016.

About Ferrari's chances, he concluded: "Our calculations showed that they’re half a second off on a single lap. Here they rebounded and I guess their upgrade is working, maybe they were running a bit heavier than us in previous sessions. We’ve got to fasten our seatbelts because that upgrade was massive. At the moment in cost cap land we can’t afford to do that, so they are proper challengers."

While Hamilton is set to start from the first row, Charles Leclerc will do so from P10 after he crashed on his first flying lap in Q3. Speaking after the session, the Briton added that having Leclerc up there would have been helpful.

He said: "It definitely will be challenging without my teammate within the group, but it’s been done before. So, I think really it’s a long way down to Turn 1. For one, I’m on the dirty side, which is not the greatest. But yes, these guys I think were really quick on the long runs, as they have been all year. So I have no idea whether I’ll be able to keep up. We’ll find out tomorrow."