Baku: Russell beats Verstappen by 0.196 s after the Safety Cars took away an eleven-second lead
A win built twice, first on pace and then in defence, against a driver who spent the whole race in someone's wake.
In the race on Saturday 26 September in Baku, George Russell started from pole and led from start to finish. For thirty laps nobody was near him: at the end of the thirtieth he was 11.463 s ahead of Oscar Piastri, in second, and a second more ahead of Max Verstappen.
Then the race closed up twice. Alex Albon's crash brought out the first Safety Car on the thirty-first lap. At the restart Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris collided at the first corner, and the Safety Car came back for three more laps. At the next restart Verstappen was 0.388 s behind.
Russell said the first half of the race was plain sailing. At the restart, with Verstappen behind him, he knew it would not be easy.
Verstappen started eighth, in the middle of the pack. At the end of the opening lap he was seventh, after seven laps he was third, and from the first restart he ran second.
On clean green laps Russell's median is 1:47.481, the best of the race, and on none of those laps did he have a car closer than a second and a half ahead. Verstappen's is 1:47.675, slower by 0.194 s. But he ran all his clean laps with another car ahead, never beyond that same threshold.
So his median is the pace of a driver chasing, and the race never measured what he would have had on his own. At the end the two were the fastest on track. The fastest lap of the race is Russell's, 1:44.916; the second is Verstappen's, 1:44.993.
For twelve laps Verstappen stayed under a second behind. He never found a way past. At the start of the last lap the gap was at its largest: 0.942 s.
On the penultimate lap Valtteri Bottas had gone into the barriers and the yellow flag had come out. Russell says he lifted off, and found the turbo gone when he got back on the throttle. No turbo, no power.
His last lap is 1:47.230, more than two seconds off his fastest; Verstappen's is 1:46.520. At the line the gap was 0.196 s, and Russell said Verstappen almost got him at the line.
Isack Hadjar, who started fourth, finishes third and gives Red Bull a double podium; Charles Leclerc is fourth. Kimi Antonelli, out in the first part of qualifying, started sixteenth and was seventeenth at the end of the first lap. He finishes fifth.
His gap to Russell is 14.512 s.
Piastri ran second for thirty-five laps and third after the restart. On the fortieth lap he locked his wheels at the first corner, lost more than ten seconds and was fifteenth the next time by. He said the lock-up took him by surprise and that he needs to understand what happened.
In the classification updated after Gabriel Bortoleto's ten-second penalty, Piastri is thirteenth.