George Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, beating out Max Verstappen by just 0.1 seconds to secure pole position. 

Russell and Charles Leclerc began the race on the front line, but Russell pulled forward, securing himself the lead. Leclerc was slow to speed up, allowing McLaren’s Oscar Piastri to pull ahead of him. Isack Hadjar soon overtook him to claim third but was quickly overtaken by teammate, Verstappen. 

On lap 40, Piastri made a critical error and took too tight of a defensive line on Turn 1, where he experienced a double front tire lockup, running him off the track. As he rejoined the circuit, he was all the way down to P15 and ended the race P14 after maintaining P2 and P3 for a majority of the race. 

Russell, Verstappen and Hadjar maintained the top three positions as the race came to a close. 

Verstappen was given an opportunity to overtake Russell during the final lap of the race, after Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas crashed into the wall at Turn 15 as his car’s power unit failed to brake correctly. Russell slowed down after incorrectly assuming there would be a safety car deployed, causing Verstappen to catch up in the last few turns. 

During the final sprint to the finish line, Verstappen was able to gain speed by staying in Russell’s slipstream until they approached the checkered flag where he moved to his right trying to overtake Russell, but was a 10th of a second too slow. 

The victory also gave Russell a Grand Slam, meaning he secured pole position in qualifying, set the fastest lap of the race, led every lap of the race and won the Grand Prix. This makes Russell the 28th Formula 1 driver in the sport’s 76-year history to achieve this. 

Lance Stroll retired on lap nine because of a water pressure issue in the car’s cooling system, marking his 10th DNF of the season. His teammate, Fernando Alonso, retired on lap 20 because of suspected power unit issues with the car. 

On lap 31, Alex Albon crashed into the safety barrier, ending his race and deploying a safety car period many teams used to change their tires and their strategies for the rest of the race. 

On lap 36, Franco Colapinto crashed into teammate Pierre Gastly and McLaren driver Lando Norris, retiring all three drivers. Colapinto also ended his streak of being the only driver without a DNF this season. The incident also caused Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad and his teammate Liam Lawson to collide and spin out. But there was no structural damage to the cars. Lindblad finished P7, while Lawson finished P12.

 Colapinto’s crash sparked controversy after Norris called for him to face a race ban and said, “There are some drivers who shouldn’t be in Formula 1,” in an interview after the race.

Verstappen, Russell and Hadjar disagreed with Norris’ comment, saying a race ban would be too harsh for the incident.  

“I think that’s too harsh, personally,” Russell said. “I think Safety Car restarts, cold tyres, a very small mistake can have big consequences and from what I saw today, that’s what it looked like. It was a small error that had a big consequence. I think, personally, race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless. So I think it was unfortunate.” 

Colapinto ended up receiving a five-place grid penalty for the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was the following weekend, and accrued no points on his Super License.  

Norris and Colapinto have since made up. Norris said, “After the race, I sent Franco a message apologising for the comments I made that I simply should not have said. I know better and emotions were running high but that is not an excuse, it was wrong of me. I’ve made mistakes of my own over the years and I know this is very much a part of racing and fighting on the limit. Me and Franco came to a good understanding, are still good friends and are both excited to get back racing this weekend,” to BBC Radio 5.

Although this was a very exciting race for most drivers, Mercedes driver and current World Driver Championship leader Kimi Antonelli had an exciting race in terms of overtakes, but finished the race at P5. Antonelli was unable to secure himself a podium position. 

Antonelli said in an interview, “This weekend was my worst of the year by far in terms of performance. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t really present especially with what happened so early on and just didn’t take the same risks especially after qualifying.” 

With a lackluster performance from the WDC leader and his teammate’s first Grand Slam, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix results spell for an interesting final seven races to go.