George Russell Claims First Grand Slam of His Career With Baku Win That Slashes Antonelli’s Title Lead

• George Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from pole to flag, leading every lap for what he called his first career Grand Slam
• The win beat Max Verstappen by just 0.196 seconds and cut Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead from 81 points down to 66 with eight rounds left
• Russell said he now “feels like myself again” after a difficult stretch of the season, while Antonelli called Baku his worst weekend of the year

Russell delivers his most complete weekend of the year

George Russell had not won a Grand Prix in the months that passed after Austria back in June. By Saturday evening in Baku, that drought was over in the most complete way he could have chosen to end it. Pole position, the race lead from lights to flag, fastest lap of the race, and a margin over Max Verstappen of just 0.196 seconds at the line. Russell called it the best weekend of his career, and the result backs him up.

“I think it’s probably my first Grand Slam in Formula 1 and my most dominant weekend,” Russell said. It is not a label he handed himself lightly. A Grand Slam, pole, win, every lap led and fastest lap combined, is one of the rarer achievements in the sport, and Russell had gone his whole career without one before Baku.

Behind him, Isack Hadjar took third and Charles Leclerc fourth, both more than ten seconds off the winning pace once the race settled down. Lewis Hamilton came home sixth in the second Ferrari, a result that leaves him 103 points off the championship lead with eight rounds to go. Lando Norris, still looking to close his own gap at the top, sits 116 points back after a weekend that ended for him in the wall rather than the points.

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A lead that nearly disappeared at the line

The result looks dominant on paper. It did not feel that way in the closing laps. Russell had built an advantage of more than 11 seconds before two separate Safety Car periods wiped it out and handed Verstappen a shot he would not otherwise have had.

“The first half of the race felt pretty plain sailing, getting the gap, the Safety Car restart,” Russell said, before describing the moment Verstappen reappeared in his mirrors. “When I saw Max behind, I thought, ‘It’s not going to be easy’. He drove incredibly at the end.”

The margin got tighter than it needed to be for a reason entirely outside Russell’s control. On the final lap, Valtteri Bottas crashed and brought out a yellow flag Russell had to respect. “When the yellow flag came out, I lifted off the power, and when I went back, I had no turbo, so then I had no power,” he said. Verstappen closed in hard in the final sector. “Max almost got me at the line, so that would have been a real shame.”

For Verstappen and Red Bull, 0.196 seconds is the kind of number that will get replayed all winter. A car that started the weekend fastest in final practice finished it a fraction away from turning a comfortable-looking Mercedes win into a Red Bull victory pulled out of nowhere at the very end. Second place on a night this close is not a bad result. It just is not quite the one Red Bull came within two tenths of taking instead.

“I feel like more myself again”

Behind the result sits a longer story about a season that had not gone the way Russell wanted it to. Antonelli, his teammate, had taken eight wins this year to Russell’s three, and Russell had openly admitted at points earlier in the year that the title fight was no longer his to have. Baku did not erase that gap, but it changed the tone of how Russell talked about the rest of the season.

“It would have been very easy for me to lose faith this season,” he said. “That never happened.” Asked what had changed to produce a weekend like this one, Russell pointed to comfort with a driving approach he has worked to adopt rather than any single fix. “I think it’s just having more experience with this sort of new driving style that I’ve adopted,” he said. “Finally it’s coming to me a bit more intuitively than it once did.”

“I feel like more myself again, so that’s really great,” Russell added, before crediting the team for staying with him through the harder months. “It’s amazing to be back on the top step of the podium. I just want to say a big thanks to my team, because they continued to believe in me through tough moments.”

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Antonelli’s worst weekend keeps the title race alive

Antonelli’s afternoon looked nothing like Russell’s. A crash in qualifying dropped him to 16th on the grid, and he spent the race recovering rather than competing at the front. He came home fifth, salvaging championship points from a weekend that could have cost him far more than it did.

“This weekend was my worst of the year by far in terms of performance,” Antonelli said. It is a striking admission from a driver who still leads the championship by a comfortable margin, and it points to how much value he places on days that go right rather than just the points total at the end of them.

The numbers still favour Antonelli by a wide margin. His lead over Russell now stands at 66 points with eight rounds remaining, down from 81 before Baku but still substantial enough that Russell was careful not to overstate his own chances. “My team mate’s had an incredible season, he’s been pretty flawless throughout, but now we’re getting to crunch time,” Russell said. “There’s much less pressure on me than there is him.”

Pundits see a driver reawakened

Sky Sports F1’s coverage picked up on the same shift Russell described in his own words. Jamie Chadwick said the response to a difficult season had been visible all weekend. “He’s definitely stepped up,” Chadwick said. “The championship is still something to be excited about.” Fellow analyst Karun Chandhok pointed to the manner of the win rather than just the result. “Winning under pressure will give him more satisfaction,” Chandhok said.

Russell was in no mood to downplay his own ambitions once the podium interviews were done. Asked what came next, his answer left little room for reading between the lines. “Win every race!” he said. “That’s the game plan.”

Sixty-six points is still a mountain with eight rounds left to climb it, and Antonelli’s recovery from 16th to fifth on his admitted worst weekend of the year is itself a reminder of how hard he is to shake off even when things go wrong for him. But Baku gave Russell something that no amount of pace alone had managed to hand him earlier in the year: a result to point to, and his own word for what changed to produce it. Whether it turns into a real title fight over the next eight weekends is a different question. For one Saturday in Baku, Russell had the answer he had been chasing all season.

More F1 Reading

• Kimi Antonelli Admits He Drove Like His Grandmother as Title Lead Shrinks to 66 Points in Baku
• Oscar Piastri Left to Explain Costly Turn 1 Lock-Up That Wiped Out His Azerbaijan Grand Prix
• Liam Lawson Admits He ‘Just Doesn’t Understand’ the Arvid Lindblad Clash That Wrecked His Baku Race
• Lando Norris Calls for a Franco Colapinto Race Ban After Baku Crash Wrecks His McLaren

Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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