Giles Richards' qualifying report
Here’s Giles’s verdict:
Giles Richards’ report on a dramatic session will be along shortly, but that’s all from me. Dominic Booth will be with you for tomorrow’s race, which is a noon BST start.
Final qualifying times
Here’s how they finished:
1 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 1:42.536
2 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 1:43.363
3 Oscar Piastri 🇦🇺 McLaren 1:43.364
4 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull 1:43.500
5 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 1:43.672
6 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 1:43.858
7 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine 1:44.047
8 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 1:44.081
9 Carlos Sainz 🇪🇸 Williams 1:44.566
10 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine 1:44.963
Q2 eliminations
11 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas 1:44.775
12 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls 1:44.860
13 Alexander Albon 🇹🇭 Williams 1:45.001
14 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas 1:45.016
15 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls 1:45.106
16 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes 1:45.504
Q1 eliminations
17 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi 1:45.799
18 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi 1:45.920
19 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin 1:46.593
20 Sergio Pérez 🇲🇽 Cadillac 1:46.658
21 Lance Stroll 🇨🇦 Aston Martin 1:47.337
22 Valtteri Bottas 🇫🇮 Cadillac 1:48.920
Alonso and Stroll will start 21st and 22nd because of power-unit penalties.
Russell will count no chickens. Antonelli hit a wall today. Piastri’s unravelling began in Baku last year. In 2021 – for all the appalling race-directing in Abu Dhabi – Lewis Hamilton’s error that dropped him from second to 15th, when Max Verstappen was already out, was a key moment in the most contentious of title races. But everyone else would want to be where Russell is.
And Russell again: “We’re in a great place to go for the win … But of course this is Baku and anything can happen.”
Wind questions. “It sounds so dumb talking about wind in an F1 car,” Piastri says, but points out there can be a 30 or 40 kph difference between laps.
“We had no hope against George,” Piastri says.
Piastri: “This year we seem we are on the back foot in practice, we come out in qualifying and yeah, we just find that bit extra.”
Leclerc: “It was quite a good lap, but when I see the gap to George, maybe it was not good enough. In terms of position it’s where we expected, but in terms of gap it’s not what we expected.”
He acknowledges that Verstappen was denied a fast lap by Norris’s problem.
Russell speaks: “It feels good … probably the biggest margin of my whole career, including F3 and F2 days.”
Antonelli has done his walk of shame.
George Russell takes pole from Charles Leclerc!
Russell’s 1:42.526 is 0.837 ahead of Leclerc. That’s a huge margin. The rest of the top 10: Pia, Had, Nor, Ham, Gas, Ver, Sai, Col.
Russell breaks 1.43 to go faster still.
Norris has stopped. Some more will be affected.
Leclerc 0.435 back, so second at present. Hamilton struggling in seventh.
And we have a yellow flag, Colapinto has stopped.
Russell going again. 1:43.037, half a second ahead of Piastri.
Norris beats Russell! But Piastri beats Norris! 1:43.571.
What can Russell do in Q3? 1:43.713 is the marker.
So George Russell has been fastest in four of the five sessions so far: FP1, FP2, Q1 and Q2. He was second in Q3. He is a team player; he must cheer for Antonelli. But he is doing everything this weekend to rebuild confidence.
Q2 eliminations
Out go Bearman, Lawson, Albon, Ocon, Lindblad and – I can’t say this often enough – Antonelli.
Colapinto escapes! Ollie Bearman out by 0.092.
Verstappen just 0.020 slower than Russell. The McLarens have been knocked down to fifth and seventh.
Drop zone shaping up as Colapinto, Ocon, Albon, Lawson and Lindbad, plus Antonelli.
Russell looks as if he could make the most of Antonelli’s absence.
Leclerc second, back 0.149 from Russell. Hamilton +0.391 in sixth.
Suddenly some speed for McLaren, with Norris and Piastri taking first place briefly, but Russell does a 1:43.686.
Everyone is chasing a tow, whether from teammates or rivals.
Q2 and ouch, but not a bad one: Lindblad finds a run-off area.
Jamie Chadwick is on the pit wall and reports that Russell was starting the lap 15mph slower, allowing him to deploy more energy later on.
It was a year ago in Azerbaijan that things started to go wrong for Oscar Piastri as championship leader, as he crashed out on lap one. Antonelli will start the race in 15th.
Q1 eliminations + Antonelli
Out go Bortoleto, Hulkenberg, Alonso, Perez, Stroll and Bottas, along with Antonelli.
And here comes George Russell in the last Mercedes, fastest in 1:43.615.
Somehow Antonelli converted the back of the grid into victory at Monza, but overtaking is far harder here.
Meanwhile … it’s a good day for Red Bull. Verstappen now fastest ahead of Hadjar in 1:44.041.
Lots of people being messed up, missing out on hot laps. Norris is down in 12th. Antonelli’s time was fast so he will make Q1; we will still lose six drivers.
“Bleep I’m sorry guys. My God.”
Antonelli out of qualifying
His front left is a huge mess. He has to park up. The radio tell him to accept it. He wants to limp back but they tell him they won’t be able to fix it.
Antonelli hits a wall!
Hamilton and Piastri go second and third, Norris is way down in eighth at +1.139 – Norris not getting any slipstream, and it shows.
Verstappen goes fastest briefly, but then is beaten by his teammate Hadjar in 1:44.702. The Frenchman champing at the bit after his layoff.
For all its difficulty, at more than 1min 40sec a lap, Baku does offer reasobable space between cars in Q1.
That delay was not so bad; as David Croft has been pointing out, last year’s qualifying took nearly two hours:
Here we go, Ollie Bearman out there first.
And we have a delay. The track is still being cleaned after incidents in the F2 race.
Portentous driver countdown time. The Sky team are reporting that the wind is up on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which will add to the unpredictability of a track with six red flags last year.
Some housekeeping. Isack Hadjar, whose first name I always think I have mistyped when I haven’t, is back in the Red Bull after his wrist injury. “I just need to get back into the rhythm but I feel great,” he tells Sky. Liam Lawson returns to Racing Bulls, and Yuki Tsunoda is presumably back on the beach. Hadjar has also been confirmed in the seat for 2027. Well as Lawson did in the past two races, that is no surprise.
Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hülkenberg will remain as the Audi driving lineup for the 2027 season, the team principal, Mattia Binotto, confirmed in Baku on Friday.
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have yet more power-unit penalties and will start at the back in Baku, however they fare in qualifying. Stroll would have started there come-what-may, of course.
Lando Norris’s hopes of another pole look slim. He said the McLaren was “miles off” the pace after placing 14th and sixth in the two sessions and he was down in eighth in FP3.
“The car didn’t feel that bad, so it’s just a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are,” he added.
Ten minutes to go.
Azerbaijan’s Remembrance Day was instituted in December 2020 to mark the outbreak on 27 September that year of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war. By F1’s 2026 standards, having a race weekend Thursday-Saturday is fairly small political potatoes.
The Middle East war led to the cancellation of the Saudi Arabian race and the rescheduling and displacement of the Bahrain GP, now taking place on Sunday 4 October in Malaysia. Now, the escalating conflict continues to threaten the climax to the season, scheduled for Qatar and Abu Dhabi but with Imola on standby should those races be postponed.
Of course there are far more important matters hanging on the US-Israel-Iran-Saudi-Arabia-Houthis conflict but Lewis Hamilton has been talking about his hopes that the scheduled season climax can go ahead:
Here’s a reminder of the picture in the drivers’ championship:
1 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes 292 pts
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 211
3 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 191
4 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 186
5 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 167
6 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 145
7 Oscar Piastri 🇦🇺 McLaren 120
8 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull 71
9 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls 59
10 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine 41
11 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls 31
12 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine 27
13 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas 18
14 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi 10
15 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi 7
16 Carlos Sainz 🇪🇸 Williams 6
17 Alexander Albon 🇹🇭 Williams 5
18 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas 3
19 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin 3
20 Yuki Tsunoda 🇯🇵 Racing Bulls 1
Yet to score:
Lance Stroll 🇨🇦 Aston Martin
Valtteri Bottas 🇫🇮 Cadillac
Sergio Pérez 🇲🇽 Cadillac
and the constructors’:
1 Mercedes 🇩🇪 503pts
2 Ferrari 🇮🇹 358
3 McLaren 🇬🇧 306
4 Red Bull 🇦🇹 230
5 Racing Bulls 🇮🇹 77
6 Alpine 🇫🇷 68
7 Haas 🇺🇸 21
8 Audi 🇩🇪 7
9 Williams 🇬🇧 11
10 Aston Martin 🇬🇧 3
11 Cadillac 🇺🇸 0
Russell had another good run in Friday’s FP3, but just missed out on a hat-trick:
Russell did go off the track at one point, into a run-off area at turn seven. It’s another tricky street circuit.
Here are the FP3 times:
1 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 1:43.922
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes +0.099
3 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari +0.111
4 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes +0.351
5 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari +0.622
6 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine +0.715
7 Oscar Piastri 🇦🇺 McLaren +0.824
8 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren +0.977
9 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull +1.254
10 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine +1.670
11 Carlos Sainz 🇪🇸 Williams +1.683
12 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas +1.770
13 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi +1.932
14 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas +1.996
15 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi +2.076
16 Sergio Pérez 🇲🇽 Cadillac +2.082
17 Alexander Albon 🇹🇭 Williams +2.154
18 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls +2.300
19 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls +2.349
20 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin +2.590
21 Valtteri Bottas 🇫🇮 Cadillac +4.665
22 Lance Stroll 🇨🇦 Aston Martin +5.357
Right, half an hour till qualifying. What has been happening so far in Baku? Thursday was a decent start for George Russell, as Giles Richards reported:
Russell has not given up hope on the title front:
Preamble
Welcome to Friday F1 qualifying. No, this is not Las Vegas, but the result of Sunday being Azerbaijan’s Remembrance Day. So from 1pm BST the 11 teams and 22 drivers will be chasing grid positions for a race that starts at noon BST on Saturday.
Two weeks ago in Spain, Lando Norris took pole but had a near-certain victory snatched away by the timing of a virtual safety car, instigated just after he passed the pit entrance and allowing pretty much everyone else to take a free pit stop … including Kimi Antonelli, the driver least in need of a slice of luck but whose championship lead was extended to 81 points with his victory.
Can Norris bounce back from the disappointment of his Madrid misfortune and claim a fourth pole in five races? Talking of Spanish pain, can Lewis Hamilton get his outside title shot back on track after his DNF? Will George Russell, back in second but with litt;;e hope of closing the gap to his Mercedes teammate, be able to show the kind of form that made him pre-season favourite? Or will Antonelli enjoy yet another stellar weekend? Join me from 12.30pm for all the buildup. For now, something a bit different to read: Alex Daniel’s report on how McLaren are targeting F1 fans with families …
