F1 Azerbaijan GP: Follow the race in Baku

Hadjar has a look at Verstappen, but the Dutchman defends to deny his team-mate the chance to pass. This'll help Piastri, as Hadjar tells his engineer to pass on a message to get Verstappen going quicker.

"Is he struggling now, or what?" the Frenchman adds. 

Russell is 7.6s clear of Piastri, who is continuing to absorb the pressure from Verstappen. The Dutchman is losing too much time behind the McLaren in the middle sector. 

The field has spaced out now - even Hadjar doesn't have overtake mode on Verstappen now. All of this music to Russell's ears. 

Hamilton dispatches Norris into Turn 1, coming up for air with sixth place.

Antonelli also puts a move on Bearman, and that's 10th place. Colapinto is next up, 5.1s ahead.

Norris makes a mistake at Turn 6, which offers a glimmer to Hamilton, but the McLaren stays ahead through Turn 7. 

"If you had free air, how much faster would you go?" Hadjar is asked. "Two or three tenths, but I'm happy to stay here or we'll just lose time," he responds.

Russell reports a gusty lap, while Piastri continues to evade the storm as Verstappen is being kept at bay. 

Hamilton's caught up to Norris again, as the McLaren has dropped off Leclerc slightly. 

Antonelli is now within a second of Bearman. 

Another lap, another Piastri defence. Verstappen questions if Hadjar is running in a different mode - he's told that his team-mate simply is using overtake. 

Antonelli is now past Lawson, so 3.5s behind 10th-placed Bearman. 

Piastri continues to deny Verstappen the overtake mode, ideal as the Red Bull deployment and tow is closing the gap down significantly, but the McLaren is just finding time through 'the castle bit'. 

Russell is about 7s in the lead now. 

Antonelli threads a move on Albon for 12th - Lawson's next up.

Piastri's doing a really good job here in this middle sector, frustrating Verstappen's progress.

Antonelli has Lawson and Albon battling in front of him, so he's keeping an eye on the pair and looking to buy into any mistakes.

Albon briefly got past at Turn 1, but then Lawson repassed him at the exit.

Piastri is continuing to find enough performance through the middle sector, which is just buying him enough gap over Verstappen for the straight. 

...but decides discretion is the better part of valour, and holds position.

Antonelli gets up to 13th, passing Ocon into Turn 1. 

"I'm not sure these mediums are very good," Verstappen reports, as the soft-shod Piastri and Hadjar around him are matching him for pace. 

The rest of the top 10 is spacing out; Leclerc is 2.6s behind Hadjar, Norris 1.3s behind the Ferrari, and 1.4s clear of Hamilton. Gasly, Colapinto, and Bearman are also doing their own thing. 

Stroll has been told to stop the car at Turn 15, but it seems he's threaded it through the escape road. Brief yellow, but nothing else.

Piastri is 4.7s behind Russell, but just about staying afloat in front of the Red Bull pair. Hadjar has a little look at his team-mate...

Piastri reports that he's struggling with the rear tyres now, those softs taking a bit of punishment with the traction zones. All this is helping Russell clear off down the road.

Antonelli is 14th, having cleared Lindblad, and now has the Lawson-Albon-Ocon train to deal with. 

Indeed, Verstappen has the overtake and gets past. Hadjar just needs to stick with his team-mate to have a chance of clearing Piastri.

That being said, Piastri's doing a good job of finding speed in that middle sector to evade the overtaken.

Norris is closing down Leclerc, having managed to build a gap on Hamilton. 

....but Bearman makes the move to rise up to 10th! 

Hadjar's trying to get within a second of Piastri, as he needs that overtake to keep Verstappen behind him. Thing is, Piastri's been strong in the middle sector.

This looked inevitable: Verstappen had so much speed that he passed Leclerc before even reaching the Turn 1 braking zone. 

Antonelli is up to 15th now, after dispatching Sainz into Turn 3. 

Gasly is keeping in touch with Hamilton, while Lawson faces a fight to keep hold of 10th over Bearman...

Hadjar is forced to the outside line into Turn 1, as Leclerc manages to defend, but Hadjar then just waits it out, gets the draft into Turn 3 and blasts past Leclerc. 

Piastri next for Hadjar? "These Red Bulls can be a problem, we want to try and keep them out of range," the Australian is told by engineer Tom Stallard.

...and Hadjar uses the overtake button to scoot past Norris to get back into fourth. Verstappen then uses the run on Norris to get past at Turn 3, as the McLaren is struggling for straightline speed.

Russell is currently 2s up on Piastri, while Hadjar is now right on Leclerc's tail - the Frenchman is looking feisty on his return! 

Russell has found a gap of over a second already, while Norris holds on from Hadjar into Turn 1. 

Verstappen dives past Hamilton at Turn 3, and moves up to sixth place! Bearman continues to battle with Albon over 11th.

Norris is now under pressure from Hadjar again...

The Azerbaijan GP is go!

Russell gets a nice getaway, as does Piastri who gets ahead of Leclerc! Norris overlaps Hadjar for fourth, while Hamilton has Verstappen behind him as the Red bull moves past the Alpines. Lawson and Albon are past Bearman. 

Antonelli hasn't made much progress, he's actually gone back and is 17th behind Sainz. 

Russell parks up, as the rest of the field takes to the grid. Bit of a wait as the Astons were quite far back...

Tyre check

Mediums for: Russell, Norris, Gasly, Verstappen, Colapinto, Sainz, Lindblad, Antonelli, Bortoleto, Hulkenberg, Bottas, Perez.

Softs for: Leclerc, Piastri, Hadjar, Hamilton, Bearman, Lawson, Albon, Ocon, Alonso, Stroll.

Hards for: nobody!

10 minutes to go. Epic Azerbaijan anthem in the books, now it's full focus on the race.

Leclerc hoping Ferrari race pace gives him a chance

One of the patterns in this year's pecking order has been Ferrari's stronger race pace versus its qualifying efforts. Although Leclerc starts second, the Monegasque felt he couldn't be as "precise" as usual in Baku - a location where he's taken four pole positions.

He was helped with a tow from Lewis Hamilton, who was slightly unhappy that he was playing the support role to his team-mate without a chance to get the benefit himself, and Ferrari's hope is that its better long-run performances can help the team stay clear of the McLarens and Red Bulls.

"Overall, the predictability of the car this weekend it has been very difficult. Normally, I feel like one of my strengths coming here is being very precise and taking a lot of risk with the distance to the wall," Leclerc said.

"This weekend I just couldn’t do that because the car was was not exactly reacting the way I wanted. It was just quite unpredictable. I still had that unpredictability in qualifying. It got better, but I had to take a bit more margin compared to what I usually do here.

"We’ll try, and we’ll do our best. Whether that will be enough, only time will tell. But we know that we have a good race car, more often than not better in the race than in qualifying, and I hope that it will be the case again this weekend."

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

Piastri needs a "tow bar" to stick with Russell

Given Russell's 0.837s pole margin over Leclerc (and we checked this, his biggest pole margin ever in his single-seater racing career, his BRDC F4 pole over Diego Menchaca at Snetterton in 2014 being his second-largest), most are expecting the Briton to cart off into the distance.

Piastri is among them. Asked in yesterday's press conference if he can keep tabs on the Mercedes, the Australian deadpanned: "If he’s got a tow bar that I can hook onto the back of, maybe. But, yeah, we’ll see what we can do.

"I think the Mercedes look incredibly quick here, but I think everyone else looks like they’re in a similar-ish kind of pack. And our race pace looked pretty good yesterday, to be honest. So, yeah, I think we can hang on and battle in the pack behind George and see what lap Kimi starts coming through as well."

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

What can Antonelli do?

When Kimi Antonelli clipped the wall in Q1 and had to pull up, you might have been forgiven for thinking "hey, I've seen this one before!". Memories of Oscar Piastri's, let's say, difficult weekend in Azerbaijan last year started to resurface...

Antonelli made it through Q1 with his first lap, but was unable to do anything more in Q2 and thus starts 16th. 

But he's done this before in Monza, after starting at the back once he'd taken a fresh power unit, and should have the speed to battle his way towards the front. He just needs to manage the risk perfectly. 

Russell, of course, will be hoping that he doesn't...

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

Photo by: Michael Potts / LAT images via Getty Images

Starting grid

All Stats

 

Cla	Driver	#		Chassis	Engine	Time	Tyres	km/h
1	G. Russell Mercedes	63		Mercedes	Mercedes	1'42.526		210.783
2	C. Leclerc Ferrari	16		Ferrari	Ferrari	+0.837 1'43.363		209.076
3	O. Piastri McLaren	81		McLaren	Mercedes	+0.838 1'43.364		209.074
4	I. Hadjar Red Bull Racing	6		Red Bull	Red Bull	+0.974 1'43.500		208.799
5	L. Norris McLaren	1		McLaren	Mercedes	+1.146 1'43.672		208.453
6	L. Hamilton Ferrari	44		Ferrari	Ferrari	+1.332 1'43.858		208.080
7	P. Gasly Alpine	10		Alpine	Mercedes	+1.521 1'44.047		207.702
8	M. Verstappen Red Bull Racing	3		Red Bull	Red Bull	+1.555 1'44.081		207.634
9	F. Colapinto Alpine	43		Alpine	Mercedes	+2.437 1'44.963		205.889
10	O. Bearman Haas F1 Team	87		Haas	Ferrari	+2.249 1'44.775		206.259
11	L. Lawson Racing Bulls	30		RB	Red Bull	+2.334 1'44.860		206.091
12	A. Albon Williams	23		Williams	Mercedes	+2.475 1'45.001		205.815
13	E. Ocon Haas F1 Team	31		Haas	Ferrari	+2.490 1'45.016		205.785
14	C. Sainz Williams	55		Williams	Mercedes	+2.040 1'44.566		206.671
15	A. Lindblad Racing Bulls	41		RB	Red Bull	+2.580 1'45.106		205.609
16	A. Antonelli Mercedes	12		Mercedes	Mercedes	+2.978 1'45.504		204.833
17	G. Bortoleto Audi	5		Audi	Audi	+3.273 1'45.799		204.262
18	N. Hulkenberg Audi	27		Audi	Audi	+3.394 1'45.920		204.029
19	V. Bottas Cadillac F1 Team	77		Cadillac	Ferrari	+5.764 1'48.290		199.564
20	S. Perez Cadillac F1 Team	11		Cadillac	Ferrari	+4.132 1'46.658		202.617
21	F. Alonso Aston Martin Racing	14		Aston Martin	Honda	+4.067 1'46.593		202.741
22	L. Stroll Aston Martin Racing	18		Aston Martin	Honda	+4.811 1'47.337		201.335
View full results

Carlos Sainz took a five-place penalty for speeding under yellow flags, while Sergio Perez got a three-place penalty for impeding Oscar Piastri. Aston Martin's decision to take new engine components render Perez's penalty effectively useless. 

Qualifying recap

One Mercedes at the front, another with a job to do from further down the grid. In case you missed it, here's how qualifying went down in Baku:

Formula 1

F1 Azerbaijan GP: Russell dominates to pole after Antonelli crashes out in qualifying

George Russell takes his fifth pole of 2026 at Formula 1's Azerbaijan Grand Prix while championship leader Kimi Antonelli won't start higher than 16th after hitting the wall

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix: coming soon!

Good morning/afternoon/evening (wherever you are!), and welcome to our live coverage of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku Street Circuit!

Expect the unexpected, they say. Baku's close walls and blend of high speeds make this one of the most difficult tracks on the calendar - and here's hoping for an entertaining race once we get under way.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Joe Portlock / Getty Images