George Russell drove a cool and calculated race on the tricky Baku street circuit to take his third victory of the F1 season and take a small bite out of his teammate’s championship lead.
The Mercedes driver led every lap of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite a couple of safety car restarts that threatened to allow his rivals a shot at getting past; he then held off a charging Max Verstappen of Red Bull in the late stages for the win.
Even still, Russell needed to work for it right until the checkered flag flew after Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas’ last-lap crash, right before the 2.2-kilometre straight to the finish line, brought out a local caution that gave his pursuer a chance to snatch the win away.
“When the yellow flag came out, I lifted off the power, and when I went back, I had no turbo, so then I had no power and Max almost got me at the line, so that would have been a real shame,” said Russell, who looked to be the class of the field after qualifying with his pole time coming in 0.837 seconds faster than everyone else.
“Clearly that final stint, the two of us were exceptionally fast and we were pulling a second a lap almost to the rest of the field, which was really good fun to be honest,” he continued. “It felt like qualifying laps, one after another, and I knew I couldn’t make a single mistake, but certainly the last 10 laps were a bit more tense than the first 40.”
In the end, Russell crossed the line just 0.196 seconds ahead of the Red Bull driver in the 51-lap race, with Verstappen’s teammate Isack Hadjar making the most of his return from a three-race hiatus, due to a wrist injury, by taking the final podium spot.
Meanwhile, championship leader Kimi Antonelli drove a damage limitation race in his Mercedes after crashing in the first qualifying session on Friday and starting near the back in 16th. He used the long straight in Baku to climb through the order and get back into the top-five by the finish.
The 25 points for the win gave Russell 236, 66 behind teammate Antonelli on 302. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton sits third with 199 points. Mercedes continues to run away with the constructors’ championship with 538 points, 160 ahead of Ferrari, on 378, with McLaren third with 306.
Second-place finisher Verstappen lamented his poor qualifying performance, which saw him start eighth, but felt that the runner-up spot likely represented the best he could do anyway.
“I think, even if I started second, I think the pace of George, it would have been very hard to pass,” he said. “I have to say that those last laps were very enjoyable because there was barely any [tire] degradation — we were just pushing to the end. Of course, it looked close on the line, but I think that was more because George suffered from a little bit of boost lag in [Turn] 15 with the yellow flag, so if you look at the last stint, it was always one second [gap], so that’s probably also where we would have finished.”
The Russell-Verstappen pair drove away from the field in the last stages, pulling a gap of more than 10 seconds to everyone else in the final 12 laps after the second and final safety car period.
After taking it “step-by-step” to get back into the swing of things as he returned from injury, Hadjar put in a solid race to take his second podium of 2026 after also finishing third in Monaco earlier this year.
“It’s been very long, six weeks,” said Hadjar, who missed three races due to his wrist injury. “This weekend, I really took it step-by-step — it’s a track you can end up in the wall really quickly. The approach was great and it brought me to that P3, so I can’t really do much better than that.”
Hadjar battled for the final podium spot with Oscar Piastri until the McLaren driver locked his brakes in Turn 1, on Lap 40, and needed to use the runoff to avoid hitting the barriers. The Red Bull driver cruised past into third and stayed there to the end.
Baku turned out to be another race to forget for Aston Martin, with Canadian Lance Stroll dropping out after only seven laps with a water pressure problem. His teammate Fernando Alonso retired with the same issue 13 laps later. In 15 grands prix, Aston Martin amassed a total of three points, all by Alonso.
With Azerbaijan in the books, Russell will now look to repeat his winning form in the next race at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia, which represents the re-located Bahrain Grand Prix, and the seven grands prix after that as he tries to catch his teammate for the title. Even with eight races to go and 200 points up for grabs, catching the high-flying Antonelli will still be a tall order.
“I didn’t really consider myself in this fight for a number of races, purely because my performance wasn’t strong enough. Now I feel like, if the season were to have started today, or since the summer break, you know, I feel very much I would have been able to fight,” he said. “I’ve got this big deficit. It can change quick. So I’m not chasing that. I’m chasing to win every race, and what will be, will be.”
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