Baku: Russell holds off Verstappen by 0.196s, and wins the duel that matters
Pole, an 11-second lead wiped out by a safety car, Verstappen alongside on the final straight. Russell held on and cut Antonelli’s lead to 66 points.
George Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from pole on Saturday 26 September, crossing the line just 0.196 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen after 51 laps of a race that never settled. Isack Hadjar completed a double podium for Red Bull, ten seconds further back.
A lead built, then erased
Russell controlled the start and pulled out a margin of around 11 seconds. Two safety cars undid all of it. The first came when Alex Albon locked up at Turn 6 and hit the wall. The second followed a Turn 1 restart pile-up: Franco Colapinto locked up into his Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly, who was pushed into Lando Norris. All three were out.
Verstappen, eighth on the grid, cut through the field: Gasly and Hamilton early, then Leclerc, then Piastri after the first restart, with Hadjar waved aside by the team. On the last lap he pulled alongside the Mercedes. Russell kept the inside line and the win, his third of the season.
The duels that decided the weekend
This is what we track on F1 Duels: the only driver with the same car. Baku produced four verdicts worth keeping.
Mercedes. The weekend Russell vs Antonelli swung. The championship leader crashed in Q1 and started 16th; Russell took pole, the qualifying head-to-head and the race. Antonelli recovered to fifth, but the gap in the standings fell from 81 to 66 points. Over 2026 the duel is now 8–7 to Antonelli in qualifying.
Red Bull. On his return from a wrist injury that cost him three races, Hadjar out-qualified Verstappen, fourth against eighth. The race restored the order: Verstappen second, Hadjar third. Their 2026 count stands at 8–4 to Verstappen in qualifying.
Ferrari. Leclerc started second and finished fourth; Hamilton qualified sixth and finished sixth, passed late by Antonelli. Leclerc now leads 9–6 on Saturdays this season.
McLaren. Piastri beat Norris in qualifying by two places (third against fifth), but neither scored: Norris was taken out at the restart and Piastri, who had been running on the podium, spun at the same corner and later dropped out of the points. The race does not count in our model: a collision is not a duel.
What’s next
Six cars retired in Baku, Haas scored for the first time since Monaco, and Racing Bulls teammates Lindblad and Lawson touched wheels. The title fight is now a Mercedes intra-team battle, which is exactly the kind our ranking was built for.