George Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix by 0.196 seconds, and it was the only close number he produced all weekend. He started from pole, led into Turn 1, set the race's fastest lap on lap 49 with a 1:44.916 and, in the post-race press conference, called it "probably my first Grand Slam in Formula 1." Then, on the last lap, the margin nearly went. "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," he said.
Max Verstappen had spent the whole final stint about a second behind. "The gap was always, like, one second, 1.1," he said of those laps, which is a fair summary of a car that could stay with the Mercedes and could not pass it. What changed on lap 51 was not the Red Bull. The yellows were for Valtteri Bottas, whose Cadillac had crashed on the penultimate lap. Bottas said he locked up into Turn 1, ran wide, then felt "as if the rears weren't harvesting anymore" into Turn 15. Russell lifted where the flags told him to, came out of Turn 15 without boost, and Verstappen drew alongside on the run to the line. "On the final lap it got close as we approached the line because George had turbo lag out of T15 due to the yellow flags," Verstappen said in Red Bull's race-day statement.
Verstappen should not have been there at all by the look of the grid. He qualified eighth after an engine problem, and Red Bull changed the unit overnight inside his allocation, so there was no penalty. He started on mediums, passed Pierre Gasly, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc and his team mate Isack Hadjar in the opening stint and was then held behind Oscar Piastri's McLaren on softs. His own verdict on the medium was that it "didn't perform as well as expected." The race turned on lap 30, when Alex Albon locked up and put his Williams into the barrier and the Safety Car came out. Every front-runner took his one stop under it, Russell, Piastri, Verstappen, Hadjar and Leclerc all on lap 31. Verstappen went to softs. Russell called the Safety Car "a little frustrating," because he had built what he described as "a good gap" and now had Verstappen in his mirrors for the restart.
The restart settled second place and three cars' afternoons. Verstappen passed Piastri. Into Turn 1, Franco Colapinto locked up his Alpine and hit his team mate Gasly, who was pushed into Lando Norris, and all three were out. The stewards gave Colapinto a 10-second penalty and, because he had retired, converted it into a five-place grid drop for the next round. Behind that, Arvid Lindblad hit his Racing Bulls team mate Liam Lawson, who spun and needed a second stop; the stewards took no further action, calling it a typical first-corner incident following a restart.
Piastri's race ended after the next restart without the car stopping. He had started third, taken second at the start, and held both Red Bulls off through the first stint. Defending from Hadjar into Turn 1, he locked the fronts, ran off and rejoined near the back. "The lock up at Turn 1 then dropped us to the back of the pack on flat-spotted tyres, and we could only do so much from there," he said. He finished 13th. With Norris out, McLaren left with nothing, and Andrea Stella did not reach for bad luck: "Leaving Baku with zero points is a difficult result to accept, but it is a responsibility we must take as a team. We made life too difficult for our drivers today." He named the car's drag and top speed as the reason both drivers had spent the race defending.
Hadjar's third place, 10.704 seconds behind, gave Red Bull what he called its first double podium "in a while." He ran the opposite strategy to Verstappen, softs then mediums, and knew what that meant for the finish. "I was happy to stay behind him as I knew the Soft was the superior tyre, and he showed that at the end," he said. Laurent Mekies said Hadjar had "an outstanding weekend since coming back from injury," called it "undoubtedly his best race with us so far," and called the whole event "our best weekend of the season." Two Red Bulls on the podium at a track that rewards straight-line speed is also the plainest measure yet of how far the car has come since Mekies's own description of the start of the year, "about a second off the pace."
Kimi Antonelli arrived as championship leader and left Baku with that lead 15 points smaller. He hit the wall at Turn 1 in the first part of qualifying and started 16th. He pitted under the first Safety Car, got through the restart pile-up, and passed Hamilton for fifth in the closing laps, finishing 14.512 seconds behind his team mate and 0.376 behind Leclerc. "Today was about damage limitation," he said, and the arithmetic agrees: 10 points from 16th on the grid, against the 25 that went to the other Mercedes.
That leaves Antonelli on 302 points and Russell on 236, a gap of 66 with eight rounds to go, starting at Sepang on 4 October. Asked for his plan, Russell gave the only one available to him: "Win every race. I mean, that's the game plan." It is not enough on its own. If Russell wins all eight Grands Prix and Antonelli finishes second behind him each time, the gap closes by seven points a race, 56 in all, one more with the Singapore sprint, and Antonelli is champion. Russell needs a car between them, or a weekend like this one to happen to his team mate more than once. Mercedes leads the constructors' standings on 538 points, 160 clear of Ferrari.