George Russell's Baku win cuts Antonelli's F1 lead to 66 points
A career-best pole margin turned into Russell's first win since Austria
George Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from pole position, leading every lap and holding off Max Verstappen's Red Bull by a tenth of a second after two safety cars had wiped out an 11-second lead. It is Russell's third win of 2026 and his first since Austria in June. With Kimi Antonelli only fifth, the Mercedes team-mates are now 66 points apart.
Russell beat Verstappen by 0.1 seconds after two safety cars in Baku
Russell took pole by eight tenths of a second, the biggest margin of his career, then led away on medium tyres while his closest rivals started on softs. Tyre wear barely mattered on Baku's street circuit, so the 51-lap race came down to one pit stop and two restarts. Verstappen, who started eighth, passed Oscar Piastri for second at the first of them and spent the last dozen laps within a second of the Mercedes. Russell lifted for yellow flags on the final lap, lost boost, and crossed the line 0.1 seconds clear. The race ran on a Saturday, moved for Azerbaijan's Remembrance Day.
Colapinto's lap-36 restart crash took out Gasly and Norris
Alex Albon's crash into the Turn 5 barriers on lap 30 brought out the first safety car, and every front-runner made their only stop under it. At the lap-36 restart, Franco Colapinto locked up into Turn 1 and hit his Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, who was pushed into Lando Norris's McLaren. All three retired, a second safety car followed, and the stewards gave Colapinto a 10-second penalty that will probably become a grid drop in Malaysia. Four laps later Piastri ran deep at Turn 1 defending from Isack Hadjar and dropped out of the points.
Kimi Antonelli climbed from 16th to fifth after his Q1 crash
Antonelli had a hydraulic leak in first practice and hit the wall in the first part of qualifying, leaving him 16th on the grid. He slipped through the Turn 1 pile-up, but contact with a Haas at that restart damaged his floor, and he finished fifth, 0.3 seconds behind Charles Leclerc's Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton was sixth. The damage stopped at 15 points; Antonelli had already shown at Monza, where he won from 19th on the grid, that a bad Saturday rarely ruins his Sunday.
Isack Hadjar took a podium on his Red Bull return
Isack Hadjar finished third in his first race after missing three rounds with a wrist injury, an absence that began when he was ruled out of the Dutch Grand Prix. Red Bull extended his contract alongside Verstappen for 2027 on the eve of the race. He qualified fourth, let Verstappen through when told to, then pressured Piastri into the mistake that handed him the last podium place.
Mercedes has won 11 of the 15 Grands Prix in 2026
Antonelli has won eight races this season and Russell three, leaving Hamilton, Leclerc and Norris with the other four; Verstappen is still waiting for his first win of 2026. Antonelli now leads on 302 points to Russell's 236, with Hamilton third on 199. Eight rounds remain, starting with the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is held in Malaysia on 4 October, then Singapore a week later. The final two, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, are still in doubt, with Imola being prepared as the fallback.
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Russell has not driven a better weekend in 2026, and it moved the title fight by 15 points. Sixty-six points over eight rounds means outscoring Antonelli by more than eight points every weekend, against a team-mate who has won more than half of this season's races in the same car. Baku proves Russell still has the speed to win when the car and the weekend line up; it does not prove Antonelli can be caught.
Antonelli's lead will still be above 50 points when the season reaches Austin on 25 October, because Russell would have to outscore him by 17 points across Malaysia and Singapore, more than the 15 he took here with Antonelli starting 16th. Russell's worthwhile prize is to make that happen at least once, and to lock down second place, where he now sits 37 points clear of Hamilton.
