George Russell won a chaotic Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, holding off Max Verstappen by less than two tenths of a second after a race disrupted by repeated crashes. The Mercedes driver crossed the line 0.196 seconds ahead of Verstappen’s Red Bull, with Isack Hadjar taking third in the other Red Bull car, more than ten seconds back. It was Russell’s third victory of the season and the eighth of his Formula One career.
The race was punctuated by incidents on the tight street circuit. Alex Albon crashed at Turn 6 to bring out the first safety car, and at the restart Franco Colapinto locked his brakes at Turn 1 and collided with Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris, ending the races of all three drivers. A later restart brought more trouble when Oscar Piastri locked up at the same corner and dropped from third to fifteenth. Valtteri Bottas hit the wall in the closing stages.
Russell said the win was hard fought against a fast closing rival. “It’s amazing to be back on the top step of the podium,” he said. “When I saw Max behind, I thought, ‘It’s not going to be easy.'” The victory ended a run in which the German team had struggled to convert its pace into results, and it handed Mercedes a timely lift with several races still left to run in the season.
Baku has a history of producing unpredictable results, its long straight and unforgiving walls punishing small mistakes. This edition followed that pattern, with the order reshuffled by the crashes and by drivers gambling on the timing of pit stops. Russell managed the restarts cleanly and kept his car off the barriers, an achievement in itself on a circuit that caught out several of his rivals over the course of the afternoon.
The result tightened an already close season and gave Russell momentum as the calendar moved toward its final stretch. For Verstappen, second place still yielded useful points despite falling just short of the win. The Azerbaijan round again showed how much a single lap or a mistimed restart can shape a Grand Prix in Baku, where the margin between victory and the wall is measured in centimetres.
