George Russell stopped the rot with a superb victory in Saturday’s Qatar Airways Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku (Sept. 26). Russell’s performance snapped a six-race winless streak where he led in only one of those events.
Despite leading every lap of this race, Russell had his nerves tested in the final laps by old rival Max Verstappen, who was chasing his first win of 2026. But despite turbo issues in the final laps, Russell held on, securing his third win of the year and keeping the championship race alive heading into the flyaways.
“I’m very proud of the resilience that I and my close group of engineers have shown during the tough periods this year because there’s been a lot of hard work to overcome some of the challenges, to adapt my driving style to suit this new car better,” said Russell in the FIA post-race press conference. “And F1 is so tough, you don’t get opportunities to practice this, and finally it’s coming to me a bit more intuitively than it once did, and I’m gaining confidence.
“And especially on circuits like this, it just allows you to eke out that little bit more on the brakes, get that little bit closer to the walls, and it’s been a flawless weekend.”
Behind Verstappen was Isack Hadjar, who bounced back with aplomb by taking his second Red Bull podium with third ahead of Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli, who started 16th following a qualifying crash. Lewis Hamilton rounded off the top six ahead of Arvid Lindblad and Esteban Ocon back in the points for the first time since Monaco. Oliver Bearman made it two Haas in the points with ninth while Carlos Sainz rounded off the top 10.
Russell’s victory cuts Antonelli’s lead down to 66 points going into next Sunday’s Bahrain GP at Sepang, while Hamilton’s dreary weekend puts him 103 behind.
Ferrari’s failure to challenge gives Mercedes a 160-point cushion in the Constructors Championship, while McLaren are 202 points adrift in third.
The Race
Needing to take advantage of his pole position, Russell aced his start and held his lead into turn 1, with Oscar Piastri getting the better launch from third to take second off Leclerc.
Russell extended his lead to over two seconds on Piastri, while Leclerc found himself under the kosh from the two Red Bulls, who worked together to reel in the Ferrari. Despite a month off due to injury, Hadjar hadn’t lost any of his form, clearing Leclerc for third on lap 4 with Verstappen following suit one lap later.
Keen not to repeat their infamous collision of 2018, Red Bull effectively told Hadjar to be careful as Verstappen breezed by into third, freeing the Dutchman to chase after Piastri and Russell.
Antonelli may have won from 19th at Monza, but at Baku he found the going much tougher and his progress through the order was slow. By lap 12, the Italian was finally starting to close in on the points, clearing Alex Albon and then Liam Lawson at the end of the lap to jump up to 11th.
It wouldn’t be until lap 17 that Antonelli broke into the points at the expense of Bearman. Any chance of replicating his Monza heroics was unlikely.
Meanwhile, in spite of a slight kiss of the turn 15 wall, Russell was in complete control of proceedings by half distance. He led Piastri by 10 seconds with the two Red Bulls and Ferraris running in tandem ahead of Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly.
Norris’ difficult race went from bad to worse on lap 25 when a lockup into turn 1 dropped him from seventh to ninth with his medium tires badly flat-spotted. Norris would only have to complete six more laps on his wounded rubber as Albon planted his Williams into the wall at turn 6, triggering a safety car.
Gasly, Antonelli and Norris were among the first to pit, with the rest of the top six following suit, maintaining the same order as before the safety car.
Action resumed on lap 36 with Verstappen immediately going on the attack, swooping by Piastri into second on the approach to turn 1. But further back, there was carnage as Franco Colapinto ran out of time to brake and steamed into Gasly, taking both out. Norris, the innocent party, was sent into the wall and taken out with them.
In the background, Lindblad also missed his braking point and tapped Lawson into a spin, much to the fury of his teammate.
Russell wouldn’t be deterred by Verstappen’s mind games and held his lead when racing resumed on lap 39, with Piastri holding third until lap 40. That’s when he, too, locked up into turn 1, handing the position to Hadjar.
Meanwhile, Antonelli continued to pick up ground and breezed past Hamilton into the top five on lap 43, with Hadjar and Leclerc next on the Italian’s list as the laps ticked by. Antonelli was keeping tabs on the fight for the lead with Russell unable to shake off Verstappen, who remained within half a second and closing in all the time.
Try as Verstappen might, Russell wouldn’t be denied and romped home to a much-needed victory, with Verstappen leading home Hadjar to seal Red Bull’s first double podium of 2026.
The Bad
Misery comes in twos for Norris, whose hopes of retaining his drivers’ title looked to have come to an end in Baku. After being outqualified by Piastri for only the sixth time this year, Norris tumbled down the order with a less-than-perfect car before locking into turn 1 on lap 25 and dropping to ninth.
Any hope of returning to the top six was extinguished by being collected in the first restart pile-up, putting Norris out of the race and producing his first non-score since Monaco. Adding insult to injury for McLaren was Piastri throwing away a golden opportunity for his first podium since Miami with a lockup into lap 40, dropping him to 14th.
If there were glum faces at McLaren, it was nothing compared to Alpine. Before the weekend, Flavio Briatore threatened to cut the Argentine’s media access to Colapinto after Gasly had been hit with a barrage of online abuse following the Spanish GP.
It looked as though off-track matters had been put to bed during the race with Gasly running a strong seventh while Colapinto held 10th. But then came the restart, where Colapinto committed the cardinal sin in racing of taking out his teammate by locking up into turn 1 and slamming into Gasly, putting both cars out of the race.
With two damaged cars, lost points and an expected grid penalty for Malaysia, Colapinto will need to keep his head down to prevent him from falling into Briatore’s firing line.
Aston Martin had another weekend to forget, with Fernando Alonso exiting on lap 15 while running at the back while Lance Stroll secured a hat trick of retirements on lap 9. The lack of pace from the Aston Martin-Honda package meant they struggled to keep up with Formula 2 cars, not exactly an indication of progress for Lawrence Stroll’s team.
The Good
When the F1 circus packed up and left Madrid a fortnight ago, the championship race looked virtually done and dusted, with Russell appearing poised to fall on the canvas after another heavy blow from Antonelli.
But the tables were turned in Baku as this time, Russell hit back by setting a blistering pace in practice. This put some pressure on Antonelli, who then blundered by crashing early in Q1, leaving him down in 16th while Russell took a dominant pole with a perfect lap.
Now, it was Russell’s chance to capitalise, and he took full advantage, not putting a foot wrong all afternoon to take his eighth career win.
It was undoubtedly his most important.
But Russell might have found himself back in second if Verstappen had found a way past in the final laps. Verstappen had looked in with a chance of taking pole position after topping final practice until a pair of poor runs in Q3, in part due to battery issues, left him down in eighth.
Throughout 2026, Verstappen has rebounded from mediocre grid positions to get on the podium, and Azerbaijan was no exception. The four-time world champion slowly moved his way up through the order before moving into third by the pit stops. He then caught Piastri off guard to take second at the restart and started reeling in Russell, with the gap being less than half a second as the chequered flag neared.
Valtteri Bottas’ stricken Cadillac helped Verstappen come within a second of Russell, but it wasn’t to be, and he had to settle for runner-up honours. Verstappen was joined on the podium by Hadjar, who had an extremely strong weekend.
Grid Walk
Azerbaijan is one of the quieter races on the F1 calendar, with most international media and celebrities giving it a miss. So, it was time for Karun Chandhok and Jamie Chadwick, fresh from her Williams F1 test, to run the grid, with Chandhok grabbing a chat with Antonelli’s race engineer Peter Bonnington from the unusual surroundings of 16th.
However, Chandhok is no Martin Brundle, as he was outbraked by his French colleague Margot Laffite for Ocon on the grid. Chandhok redeemed himself by grabbing a chat with one of the few celebrities in Baku, 2007 MotoGP champion Casey Stoner, who was asked for his views on Ferrari’s woes.
Chadwick was way more at ease as she grabbed Ayao Komatsu and Laurent Mekies for brief chats before the Azerbaijan national anthem forced everyone off the grid.
The Driver
The misery of Monza and Baku could have seen Russell fold and accept his fate as a distant runner-up to Antonelli. But the Brit showed in Azerbaijan that he wasn’t going down without a fight, hitting back with a near-flawless weekend.
From opening practice, Russell looked in a league of his own, topping two of the three opening practice sessions before taking a dominant pole position from Leclerc. The first half of the race was Russell at his best, pulling out a lead of nearly 10 seconds prior to the safety car.
Despite losing his lead, Russell didn’t buckle under the pressure, and although Verstappen remained a nuisance in the closing stages, the result was never in doubt.
F1 Glossary word of the day
Fortress: The Baku Fortress Wall has been part of Baku’s security for centuries and has survived attacks and Azerbaijan’s independence from the Soviet Union. Nowadays, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and a place for drivers to shout at after a shunt.
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