wellnessfitpro
Key events
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:
Misjudgment and error left Formula One’s leading lights flailing on the streets of Baku, but Max Verstappen delivered pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with the control and precision execution that was a salutary reminder of the mental strength that backs his undoubted talent.
Verstappen took the top spot after a dramatic and chaotic session on the testing street circuit, interrupted by a record six red-flag stoppages due to crashes. It concluded with a grid turned upside down and the two world championship rivals, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, left languishing in seventh and ninth.
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:
“I personally want to go. I love going to the Middle East,” he said. “From what I have read, things seem OK out there, but I don’t have all the information and I don’t know what the risk levels are. I trust in Stefano [Domenicali, F1’s chief executive] to make the right decision for the sport. And I do hope we get to go there.”
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:
Max Verstappen denied Mercedes rival George Russell a clean sweep of practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix by going fastest for Red Bull in Friday’s final session ahead of qualifying.
The Dutchman clocked a 1min 43.922sec lap in the closing minutes of the hour-long session to pip Russell by 0.099. Lewis Hamilton also pulled out a late flier to go third for Ferrari 0.111 seconds off Verstappen’s pace.
Kimi Antonelli, the runaway championship leader, was fourth. He lost valuable track time to a hydraulics problem on Thursday. Reuters
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 opened well in Azerbaijan, quickest in first practice in a session where Antonelli lost half his run time with a hydraulic problem. In the afternoon Mercedes were once more on top, looking ominously quick on the street circuit which is energy-starved and plays to their car’s strengths in energy harvesting and deployment. Russell was quickest again, a full half a second up on Antonelli with their nearest competitor, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, eight-tenths back in third.
Russell has not given up hope on the title front:
“I’m going to keep fighting at every single race until it’s mathematically impossible,” he said in Baku. “I want to try and win every single race and put it on pole at every single race. That’s my goal and that’s what I’m working towards every single weekend.”
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 …
#Kimi #Antonelli #crashes #F1s #Azerbaijan #Grand #Prix #qualifying #live #updates #Formula
