The Azerbaijan Grand Prix just made the 2026 title look optional

A win that should have settled the place down

George Russell did the Baku weekend you're supposed to do if you have the car for it. Pole in 1:42.526. Race win in 1:38:02.143. Twenty-five points, Mercedes still first and second in the championship, and a constructors' lead that still looks unfair. On a street circuit that usually punishes anyone trying too hard, that ought to feel like a team in control.

It doesn't, quite. Max Verstappen started eighth and finished two tenths behind him. Kimi Antonelli dropped out in Q1, started 16th, and still went home leading the championship. McLaren put Oscar Piastri third on the grid and Lando Norris fifth, then scored nothing at all. If this was the round where 2026 was meant to start making sense, Baku had other ideas.

Saturday already had a funny look to it

Russell's pole wasn't a shock. It was just very Russell: one lap, no fuss, everyone else playing catch-up. Charles Leclerc was next, eight tenths back. Piastri was a thousandth behind Leclerc. Then Isack Hadjar, then Norris. That's a top five that looks like a title fight until you notice who's missing.

Verstappen qualified eighth, more than a second and a half off pole after a Q3 that got away from him. Antonelli didn't even make Q2. Sixteenth, almost three seconds slower than his teammate. You can dress that up as a street-circuit thing, a messy lap, a kid still learning. Or you can just say it: on Saturday in Baku, Mercedes had one car in the fight and another that needed rescuing.

Ferrari were more straightforward. Leclerc on the front row, Lewis Hamilton sixth. Williams and Cadillac took grid penalties, which is why Carlos Sainz started 14th after making Q3 and Sergio Perez started 20th. Those penalties happened. They don't explain why Mercedes looked like two different teams.

Two tenths, and a lot of people in the wall

Russell led. Verstappen came for him. After 51 laps the gap was 0.196 seconds, which is not a cruise and not a smash-and-grab either. It's a world champion treating eighth on the grid as a starting point, not a problem.

Hadjar finished third from fourth, a little over ten seconds back. That's a proper podium, and Red Bull will be happy to talk about it. They'll be less keen to dwell on the other part: Verstappen's climb was helped by a team order with Hadjar. Red Bull have spent years saying they let them race. In Baku they spent a rookie's afternoon making sure the man on 163 points got to 18. Perfectly legal. Not exactly the behaviour of a team that thinks the championship is done.

Leclerc turned second on the grid into fourth, then went and asked for upgrades in public. When you qualify on the front row and finish in no-man's-land, that isn't radio noise. Ferrari have 378 points. Mercedes have 538. That's 160 points, with eight Grands Prix plus the Bahrain race in Malaysia still to go. You don't make that up with a strong quote.

Antonelli's fifth from 16th will get used as proof the lead is fine. Ten points from a wrecked Saturday is genuinely good. It's also a 15-point swing the wrong way. He arrived in Baku on 292, Russell on 211. He left on 302 to 236. The gap is 66 now, not 81. Another weekend like that and the "it's the kid's title" chat starts sounding a bit hopeful.

Hamilton was sixth from sixth, 22 seconds back. Uneventful, which Ferrari could use more of. It doesn't change the argument Leclerc is already having with the factory.

The people still racing

Arvid Lindblad went from 15th to seventh. Esteban Ocon from 13th to eighth. Oliver Bearman from tenth to ninth. Sainz nicked a point from 14th. From seventh to tenth they were covered by about a second and a quarter — an actual race, while the big names were busy binning it. Haas scored six points. McLaren scored none. That's going to sting all the way to Singapore.

Baku always takes a few cars. This year it took a pile of them: Franco Colapinto, Pierre Gasly, Norris, Alex Albon, Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll. Alpine managed a double retirement after Colapinto hit Gasly, and Norris got collected in the same mess. Colapinto has a five-place drop waiting in Malaysia. Norris later apologised for what he said about him. None of it puts a point back on McLaren's 304.

Piastri finishing 13th from third is the one you hide in the notes and hope nobody brings up at dinner. Andrea Stella can talk about straight-line speed as long as he likes. The weekend still reads: third on the grid, 13th at the flag, 36 seconds back, no points, teammate in the wall. McLaren are third in the constructors, 74 behind Ferrari and 234 behind Mercedes. Baku didn't end them. It did make you wonder how long they can keep turning up to the same conversation.

Liam Lawson and Lindblad found each other on track. Lawson ended up 12th; Lindblad still scored. Racing Bulls now have 79 points, two ahead of Alpine, a little scrap that will matter more than Mercedes want it to if the top four keep throwing afternoons away.

Cadillac are still on zero. Perez finished 14th from 20th and called it a positive, which, given the year, is fair enough. Aston Martin parked both cars from the back. Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto were 11th and 15th for Audi. That's most of this grid, really: the new names are here, they finish races, and they're not writing the season yet.

What actually changed

Russell didn't win the championship. One pole-to-flag, even with Verstappen arriving late, doesn't wipe a 66-point hole. Antonelli didn't lose it either. Fifth from 16th is how you keep a title alive after a rotten Saturday.

What Baku did was make the rest of the year look less automatic. Red Bull will take 33 points from a weekend that started with Verstappen eighth and call it a statement. Mercedes will take 35 and call it control. Both can be true. So can the less comfortable version: the team leading the championship still couldn't get both cars into Q3, and the team with the best recovery still needed a swap to make the podium look like a title push.

Sepang is next week, wearing Bahrain's name for the weekend. If Baku was the warning, Malaysia is the first one nobody gets to shrug off.