George Russell had this race won. Not nearly won, not probably won, actually won, with a cushion so fat he could have pitted, made a cup of tea and still come out ahead. Then Alex Albon found the Turn 6 wall, the safety car came out, and Baku turned into a different race entirely.
From pole, Russell had built more than 10 seconds over Oscar Piastri’s McLaren as the field approached the second half of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, still needing to make their mandatory stops. It was the kind of gap that ends title-race conversations rather than starts them. Then, on lap 31 of 51, Albon locked up heading into Turn 6 and speared into the tyre barrier, bringing out the safety car so the Williams could be recovered and the barrier checked for damage.
The Pit Stop Everyone Got for Free
The timing could not have been crueller for the man who had just delivered one of the qualifying performances of the season. Every driver still due a stop got to make it under safety car conditions, wiping out the pit-lane time loss that Russell’s rivals would otherwise have paid. Russell himself switched onto the favoured soft tyres for the restart, a sensible move given how strong the slipstream has been all weekend on Baku’s colossal straight, but the point of pitting under green flag racing is to build an advantage, not to hand it back for nothing.
As reported by Crash.net, Isack Hadjar used the safety car period to radio his Red Bull team with a request that doubled as a warning: “If Max can’t win this race, I need help with Piastri.” Fourth on the restart in his first race back since injury sidelined him for three rounds, he is suddenly a live threat rather than a midfield afterthought.
Restart Order and Who Actually Benefits
Russell leads the restart, but the margin he earned with his lights-to-flag domination has gone. Piastri sits second, with Max Verstappen third and, crucially, on the same soft tyres as the race leader. Hadjar is fourth, ahead of both Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Further back, championship leader Kimi Antonelli restarts eighth on softs, still digging himself out of the hole created by his qualifying crash, which had already been covered in detail after he went out in Q1 following a Turn 1 shunt. Lando Norris restarts ninth, having thrown away positions just laps before Albon’s crash with a lock-up and a run wide at Turn 1 of his own.
| Pos | Driver | Team | Tyre for Restart |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | George Russell | Mercedes | Soft |
| 2 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | Medium |
| 3 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull Racing | Soft |
| 4 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull Racing | Medium |
| 5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | Medium |
| 6 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | Medium |
| 8 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | Soft |
| 9 | Lando Norris | McLaren | Soft |
The tyre picture is where this restart gets genuinely interesting. Russell and Verstappen are on the same soft compound, which strips away any advantage Russell was banking on from having controlled the race so completely. Pierre Gasly, Antonelli, Norris, Franco Colapinto, Arvid Lindblad, Gabriel Bortoleto, Sergio Pérez, Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz also opted for softs, while the rest of the field, including Piastri and Hadjar, stayed on mediums.
Aston Martin’s Weekend Gets Worse Again
Albon was not the only retirement of the afternoon. Both Aston Martins, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, also stopped, adding to what has already been a miserable few days for the team in Baku. Aston Martin’s weekend had already been overshadowed by a fifty-place grid penalty for Alonso after engine component changes, and having already suffered three double DNFs this season, with Baku making it four, which is not the kind of consistency any team wants to be known for.
A Race Reset, Not a Race Decided
Russell’s pole had already been a statement, eight tenths clear of the field in a session where his own team-mate could not get out of Q1, as covered in the qualifying report from earlier in the weekend. Turning that into a lights-to-flag victory would have been the obvious follow-up, and for thirty laps it looked exactly that straightforward. Albon’s crash has not cost Russell the lead, but it has cost him the cushion, and on a circuit where the slipstream down the main straight has been described all weekend as immensely powerful, a car alongside on equal tyres is a very different problem to a car ten seconds behind.
Verstappen took fresh power unit components ahead of the race, but they came from his own allocation pool, meaning no grid penalty attached itself to the move. That detail suddenly matters more than it did an hour ago: he restarts on the same tyres as the man he needs to beat, with nothing but racing laps between himself and a genuine shot at the win.
