Race Report: Russell beats Verstappen, Hadjar in Baku

George Russell converted pole position to victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku ahead of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar. George will need wins and maybe some bad luck from his teammate to win the championship and this week, he got both.

Win

A big win for George Russell who needed to turn his luck around if he had any hope of staying in the title fight. George looked in complete control all weekend and during the race, he was leading comfortably until a series of Safety Cars and yellow flags which saw him finish a tenth or two ahead of Max Verstappen at the finish line. It was a perfect race from George and perhaps this will re-ignite him for a good run to the end of the season. With a host of upgrades in Malaysia, he may get more performance too.

A win for Red Bull and both drivers. Max Verstappen finished in P2 and Isack Hadjar in P3. There was much discussion as to why Max didn’t let Isack through early in the race when he was struggling with his Medium compounds and Isack was on Softs. I’m not convinced Isack had the pace to threaten Oscar Piastri at that time either so I think the team made the right choice for track position and the coming medium compounds for Isack. The Red Bull upgrades are certainly working.

Big win for Haas F1 with both drivers in the points. It was much-needed and Estaban Ocon in P8 and Ollie Bearman in P9 was a good result.

A win for Arvid Linblad for finishing P7 but taking out his teammate, Liam Lawson, during the Colapinto debacle was not a good look. Still, he was the quicker of the two.

Also a win for Carlos Sainz and Williams for scoring the final point and it seemed like a good nod to their raft of upgrades they brought this weekend.

Thanks to attrition, Sergio Perez had a good race for Cadillac in P14 while his teammate put it in the wall.

Fail

A fail for Kimi Antonelli who crashed in Qualifying leaving a lot of work to do on Saturday. To be fair, it was a great recovery drive to P5 but had he not made the mistake, it could have been a win.

A fail for Franco Colapinto who managed to lock up and take out his teammate, Pierre Gasly as well as Lando Norris at the restart. A tragic impact on a dual-points finish for Alpine in their battle against the Racing Bulls. The internet is lit up with all of the Franco hate and even Lando Norris implied he shouldn’t be in F1 and should get a race ban. That’s a bit harsh, this can happen and has happened to many drivers including Max Verstappen.

A fail for McLaren fresh off their new branding upgrade and some new upgrades for the car this weekend. Lando Norris looked slower on Thursday, quicker on Friday and then slow on Saturday. He was taken out by Colapinto and then Oscar Piastri locked up late int eh race and dropped out of the points from a podium position.

Miserable weekend for Aston Martin. Full stop.

WTH

Tough weekend for Audi, I was not expecting them to be that far down the order. The pace just seemed to evaporate over the weekend.

Not sure what happened to Alex Albon. Not a huge shunt but looked odd.

A real shame for Pierre Gasly who looked set for good points and in a car that was working very well here.

Also odd how much more pace Oscar Piastri had versus Lando Norris. Lando just struggled the entire race

Pirelli Report:

“Today’s race largely confirmed our pre-race expectations. The Soft and Medium compounds proved to be the most effective choices, to the extent that the grid was split almost evenly between the two options at the start, regardless of starting position, with some teams differentiating tyre selection between their drivers. Many teams attempted to extend the opening stint in the hope of benefiting from a race neutralisation, a scenario that ultimately materialised.

From a tyre behaviour standpoint, the extremely low degradation observed over the previous days was once again evident during the Grand Prix. Both the C4 and C5 displayed very low wear levels, with no significant graining, allowing drivers to maintain a strong pace for most of the race.

In these conditions, the Soft provided an advantage in terms of grip and driver confidence, particularly noticeable on a demanding circuit such as Baku, to the point that it proved to be the most competitive race tyre. A clear example was provided by the two Red Bull drivers who, despite having identical machinery but opposite strategies, saw the driver on the red-marked tyre deliver the stronger performance.

Overall, drivers were able to push from start to finish with very limited tyre management, focusing mainly on bringing the front axle back into the operating window after the various restarts following neutralisations, in order to avoid lock-ups and braking errors, incidents that nevertheless still occurred. The Hard compound, meanwhile, played no role in the race, as the performance of the other two compounds never made a more conservative option necessary.”