George Russell won his third Grand Prix of the season with victory in Baku, the Mercedes man standing on the top step of the rostrum for the first time since Austria. In doing so, he cut his team mate’s lead in the Drivers' Championship, Kimi Antonelli now 66 points ahead in the standings. Antonelli arrived in Azerbaijan with an 81-point advantage over Russell following his back-to-back victories in Monza and Madrid....
Carlos Sainz recovered from a grid penalty in Baku to score for the first time in 10 rounds, but the Spaniard believes that Williams “need more” from their upgrades if they “want to fight for points regularly”. The Grove-based outfit have struggled with an overweight car and additional performance issues for most of the 2026 season, leading to their decision to focus resources on a significant package introduced at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix....
Sergio Perez believes his performance in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was “one of my best weekends” in Formula 1, despite failing to reach the points for Cadillac. The streets of Baku have been a happy hunting ground for the Mexican, who took victories at the venue in 2021 and 2023 when driving for Red Bull, and Perez was hopeful of a strong result again last weekend. Although Perez enjoyed his best practice outings of the season, the Cadillac driver ultimately fell short in Qualifying and could only manage P20, as well as receiving a three-place grid drop for impeding....
George Russell was the driver to beat throughout the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, as he charged to pole position and bagged an important win. But who else impressed our Power Rankings judges at the Baku City Circuit? Check out the latest scores and overall leaderboard below… Russell was back to his best on the streets of Baku - leading the way in Thursday practice, taking pole position by a whopping eight tenths of a second, and converting that into victory despite intense pressure from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the closing stages....
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was the sort of complete performance we expected to see a lot more of from George Russell this season. It was a thrilling race to watch as two drivers went toe to toe in the final dozen laps, but Russell’s nerve held as he put in his best performance of the year to keep Verstappen at bay. For much of the weekend it looked as though Russell had the race in the bag....
Ferrari have moved to quash speculation surrounding Team Principal Fred Vasseur’s future by confirming the Italian team have made their “choices already” and they have “full confidence” in the Frenchman and his team. Vasseur joined Ferrari at the start of the 2023 season and during that tenure, he has faced frequent speculation surrounding his role. The latest came over the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend following comments from former Red Bull boss Christian Horner - who is promoting his new book - in The Times newspaper, where he said Ferrari would be the “dream” destination for him....
Audi CEO Mattia Binotto has made no secret of his plans for Freddie Slater, stating in Azerbaijan that he wants the youngster “into an F1 seat” in the near future. Slater signed with Audi as part of their Driver Development Programme earlier this year and has rewarded the team for their faith in him with a strong season in F3, where he finished runner up to Ugo Ugochukwu. Slater has benefitted from working closely with Audi’s Racing Director Allan McNish, whose former role with the team was to run their junior academy, and the 18-year-old is set to graduate into the ranks of F2 next season, having signed with Invicta Racing....
Everybody loves a comeback story. That’s why Isack Hadjar’s Baku podium was met with well wishes and good feelings up and down the paddock on Saturday evening. Now, I realise Hadjar wasn’t sitting out for a full season or anything like that, but three races ‘on the couch’ as he put it, feels like an eternity for a driver. Usually when a driver has a mid-season sabbatical like he had, there are one of two outcomes on the other side of it....
Aston Martin will race an unchanged line-up in 2027 with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll extending their long-term contracts with the British team. While Stroll had been expected to stay on for a ninth season, Alonso’s future was less certain given the team’s poor performance so far this year. But ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, Aston Martin - who sit 10th in the Teams' Championship - moved to confirm their line-up....
Haas Team Principal Ayao Komatsu will sit for an on-stage Q&A at the F1 Business Summit in Las Vegas, as part of a programme that also brings in chef Gordon Ramsay, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Russell Wilson and three-time Olympic snowboarding champion Shaun White. The Summit takes place on Thursday 19 November 2026 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, two days before the Las Vegas Grand Prix. It is a ticketed event, hosted by actress, comedian and podcast host Heather McMahan....
McLaren turned up at Baku with a big upgrade but although its introduction did not go as smoothly as the team’s previous packages - there were some repairs necessary after the first day of practice - the team was satisfied that the changes brought the improvements they sought. From the outside, it was difficult to judge how big an improvement because the nature of the Baku track was fundamentally unsuited to the McLaren, with the long Caspian ‘straight’ punishing the car’s short gearing and the slow, short corners not playing to the car’s strength in long, fast turns....
Fernando Alonso’s love affair with Formula 1 will continue as the Spaniard has opted to stick around for at least another year with Aston Martin. The double World Champion will turn 46 next year, which still leaves him nine years shy of F1’s oldest driver to start a race, Louis Chiron, but comfortably the oldest of the recent generation. Alonso took his time to make his decision because he knew Aston Martin would wait for him while he pondered his future and whether he fancied another season with a project that has really struggled this year....
Max Verstappen chased George Russell all the way to the line at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, coming just 0.196s shy of snatching the win away from the Mercedes driver. It was a gap more than four times smaller than Russell’s pole position advantage, and among the closest winning margins in the history of Formula 1 - but it falls 0.014s and one position shy of squeaking into the top 10 closest F1 finishes ever....
It was only as he moved into third place, past team mate Isack Hadjar, that Max Verstappen realised he had a problem. His rise from eighth on the grid had been typically excellent and demonstrated the pace he felt he should have had in Qualifying, before engine problems and yellow flags left him in the lower reaches of Q3. Quicker than Hadjar on Lap 7, the team enforced orders to have them swap positions, and having easily passed Lando Norris a few laps earlier, getting through Oscar Piastri to have a shot at race leader George Russell looked like a formality....
Esteban Ocon has insisted he is “one of the best out there” among the current crop of F1 drivers, as he bounced back in style in Baku amid doubts over his Haas future. It’s been a tough 2026 for the Frenchman and his frustration boiled over on Friday in Azerbaijan when a yellow flag left him in P14 in Qualifying on a day when Q3 was on the cards. It was the last thing he needed given the speculation surrounding his Haas future in 2027, after he hinted he was “definitely a free agent for next year....
Flavio Briatore has said he will take time to “consider what course of action should be taken” after Franco Colapinto’s error in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix took both him and team mate Pierre Gasly out of the race, as well as McLaren’s Lando Norris. Saturday’s race in Baku had been going positively for the Enstone-based team up until that point, with Gasly holding onto seventh place while Colapinto had been duelling for P9 with Norris, who had just dropped down the order following a lock-up....