Azerbaijan GP conclusions: Russell back in the game, Colapinto ban demand, untelevised Hamilton radio

Mercedes driver George Russell claimed his third win of the F1 2026 season at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.

Russell held off Max Verstappen to secure his first victory since Austria in June, with Isack Hadjar completing Red Bull’s first double podium finish since 2024 in third. Here are our conclusions from Azerbaijan…

George Russell finally has a chance to put pressure on Kimi Antonelli

Mercedes’ logic behind the decision to take Kimi Antonelli’s engine penalty at Monza was… curious.

The team made a great deal of the fact that Monza was the ideal circuit to serve a grid drop, with the layout offering the best chance to recover positions on race day.

Antonelli went ahead and proved that thesis correct, winning from 19th on the grid to claim one of the great grand prix victories.

Yet there was another reason – a more emotional reason – for choosing Monza too.

More than once ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, Mercedes – both Toto Wolff and his deputy Bradley Lord – spoke of taking the pressure off Antonelli’s shoulders at his home race, the circuit where his F1 practice debut ended in the barrier after 10 minutes in 2024.

Pressure? What pressure?

In a season in which everything Antonelli has touched has turned to gold, why deny him – at least on paper – a shot at the crowning glory of winning his home race?

Here’s a thought that keeps recurring: was all that talk of taking the pressure off a tacit admission that Kimi must be managed with ever-greater care over the next few months as he closes in on a first world championship?

Might there be trepidation within Mercedes that, as he moves ever closer to the title, the ghosts that derailed his debut season in 2025 could suddenly return?

George Russell had been waiting since March for those old Antonelli vulnerabilities to resurface and in Baku he finally got it as Kimi nudged the inside barrier at Turn 1 in the first part of qualifying.

The impressive nature of Antonelli’s recovery to fifth on race day – measured, sensible, low risk all the way – indicated that there should be no hangover from this weekend.

Yet as with Oscar Piastri after this race last year, the onus is now on those closest to Antonelli – Wolff, Lord, the trusty Peter Bonnington and Kimi’s father Marco – to ensure that one mistake does not breed another.

And Russell? Now he will be smelling blood.

It will never cease to amaze that a driver of such obvious qualities has been made to look so painfully limited and second rate for much of 2026.

It is scarcely believable that, were it not for his desperate little trick under yellow flags in qualifying in Austria, Russell would still have been rooted on a single win this season prior to Baku.

For the first time since Melbourne, however, George Russell looked like George Russell again this weekend.

Having realised where he was going wrong with the 2026 car and worked at it, Russell has been happier with his pace since the summer break and is gradually rebuilding his confidence.

The way he repelled Verstappen’s advances in the closing laps in Baku – quick in all the right places and completely nerveless at a circuit where one tiny mistake can send a driver down one of those escape roads – was the mark of a driver regaining control of his season.

In a year marred by yo-yo racing and power-surge overtakes, those laps in which Max played cat and George mouse – two great competitors sizing each other up – made for the most gripping and rewarding passage of racing of the entire season.

And did you notice, FIA? FOM?

Not a single overtake between them. Proof that a great motor race doesn’t have to be an overtake-a-thon.

The moment Max broke into a smile as he caught Russell’s eye in parc ferme – that was pretty good, wasn’t it? – was the cherry on the top.

Here comes a chance, then, for Russell to exert serious pressure on Antonelli for the first time this season.

Expect plenty of rhetoric from George, still to serve a grid penalty of his own, about having nothing to lose over the next few weeks.

The natural implication, of course, being that Antonelli has everything to lose.

Russell knows it.

Even more significantly, Kimi knows it too.

That’s exactly why Red Bull never imposes team orders on Max Verstappen

Must we still have this tired old debate about Max Verstappen, Red Bull and team orders?

After all this time? Oh, alright then…

Max made his position on things abundantly clear in Brazil four years ago and that should have been the end of that.

“You guys don’t ask that again to me, OK?” he said over team radio on that occasion. “Are we clear about that?”

For close to a decade now Verstappen has been the point around which Red Bull’s world revolves.

An extra place at the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with no championship on the line and George Russell disappearing into the distance at that stage of the race, was not going to change matters.

Rightly or wrongly, all Red Bull would achieve by asking Max to move over for a teammate is antagonising him.

This is not a fight worth starting unless there are very exceptional circumstances.

And what an inspired decision it proved to be by Red Bull on Saturday, holding firm even as the watching world was crying out for Isack Hadjar to be allowed through.

When the time came to strike – Alex Albon’s accident triggering the safety car – the team was ready to pounce.

Verstappen was at the front of the queue for the double-stack pit stop and there was no need to awkwardly shuffle the ‘second’ car out of the way ahead of the restart.

All of a sudden, Verstappen was on the faster soft tyre that made Hadjar so quick early on and, with Oscar Piastri soon taking himself out of the equation, now only had Russell in front of him.

Starting on what proved to be the unfavourable mediums, the balance of power in the Red Bull ‘battle’ was always going to shift to Verstappen as the race unfolded and he made the switch to softs.

This episode will doubtless be held up as yet more evidence of Red Bull’s preferential treatment towards Max as though it is somehow unwise or weak leadership on the part of Laurent Mekies.

Instead, it is an elevated position – not unlike Michael Schumacher’s all-controlling influence at Ferrari – that Verstappen’s years of success have earned him.

A team will always instinctively side with the driver who offers the highest ceiling, even on days like Saturday when the evidence of their own eyes is strongly – but, crucially, only temporarily – suggesting otherwise.

Red Bull’s eyes were fixed not on challenging Piastri for second place, but positioning itself to challenge Russell for victory if the opportunity presented itself.

And how did it turn out in Baku?

With Verstappen falling short by a couple of metres of Red Bull’s first win of the season.

It was a victory in one way, though.

A triumph for taking a long-term view rather than making snap decisions on a whim.

There’s a lot to like about Isack Hadjar

Formula 1 drivers, eh?

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

Fifty years after Niki Lauda was burnt to a crisp and returned a few weeks later – looking like a roast chicken, as one F1 reporter put it at the time – here comes Isack Hadjar taking a whole month away with a hurty wrist.

Elf ‘n’ safety gone mad.

That’s one way of looking at it anyway.

Another would be that Hadjar’s refusal to rush back is yet another sign that this is a driver of substance and maturity way beyond his years.

Having spoken to the MotoGP champion Marc Marquez, himself no stranger to wrist injuries, shortly after his accident over the summer break, there was no temptation for Hadjar to cut corners in his recovery.

Coming back too soon, and risking long-term and potentially career-limiting damage, was totally out of the question.

In the early days of a career that may have more than a decade left to run, missing Zandvoort, Monza and Madrid – frustrating though it may have been for him at the time – will prove a small price to pay.

Conclusions recap: How the F1 2026 season has unfolded

Spanish GP conclusions: Imaginary Hamilton challenge over, Norris joins elite, soulless Madring

Italian GP conclusions: Shameless Hamilton playing dangerous game, painful Russell defeat

Not every driver would see things that way.

Especially not inside the Red Bull system, where every driver is permanently desperate to prove themselves.

Yet that’s the thing about Hadjar: there is no desperation to prove himself.

He is remarkably comfortable in his own skin for someone so young. For someone who, at least to the wider world, actually still has an awful lot to prove.

The temptation is to say that he has a quiet confidence about him.

Except, in his own understated way, he is quite loud when it comes to expressing it.

The news of his return in Baku was followed 24 hours later by the announcement that he will remain a Red Bull driver for the 2027 season having so far passed the Max Verstappen Stress Test.

Asked in a press conference the following day if he ever had concerns that he would not be retained, Hadjar was brilliantly blunt about it: no.

Wasn’t really interested in contract talks. Left it to others.

All he knows is that if he performs well enough, everything else will take care of itself.

And he knows he’s been performing well enough in 2026, so what was there to worry about?

Hard to argue with that.

Other drivers have walked into Red Bull before, saying all the right things about it being impossible to beat – let alone match – Max.

Yet how many have truly believed it?

Not many. And their careers soon died trying.

The key to Hadjar’s survival so far, then? Acceptance.

Acceptance that he starts somewhere near the foot of the mountain and his job is simply to climb as far up it as he can.

Will he ever join Verstappen at the very summit?

Maybe not.

But at this rate, he’ll pass a few bodies on the way up.

Another race, another sign of discontent between Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari

Almost every world champion to drive for Ferrari over the last two decades has reached a fork-in-the-road moment at some stage.

A moment where they either decide to win together – or tear each other apart.

Take Fernando Alonso, who could never bring himself to forgive nor forget the fact that the team cost him the world championship in 2010.

How different his Ferrari career might have been had Fernando just managed to get that one over the line.

See also Sebastian Vettel, whose relationship with Ferrari wasn’t quite the same after he was publicly instructed to concentrate only on the driving by the Maurizio Arrivabene/Sergio Marchionne regime in 2016.

It wasn’t until Charles Leclerc came along and stole the team’s heart from him in 2019/20 that Vettel came to realise that his ambition of winning the title with Ferrari was beyond him.

And what links Alonso and Vettel again?

Ah, yes: they were the two names Lewis Hamilton cited last year when he vowed to break the cycle of established world champions failing to win the title with Ferrari.

Yet, almost without realising it, has Lewis been confronted by his own fork in the road at Maranello?

Has the relationship between them changed in such a way recently that it will be difficult to salvage from here?

As noted in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from Spain, Hamilton’s current frustration with the team appears to stem from a fundamental mismatch between expectations and reality in the summer of 2026.

Hamilton seemed to believe that an eighth championship was within his reach following his first win for Ferrari in Barcelona in June.

Not long after, he came to realise that Ferrari is not yet equipped to deliver it, something he has struggled to deal with as the year has developed and his title hopes have gradually faded away.

A few months away from turning 42, he doesn’t have the time to wait around for Ferrari to finally get it right.

He needs the car, the upgrades, the communication and the execution – and he needs all of it now.

Who’s to say, after all, if the scent of a title chance will ever float his way again beyond this season?

With every emotional outburst to the media and every passive-aggressive team radio message, though, Lewis is only making matters worse.

Take on Ferrari in public and you take on an entire nation, ready and waiting to defend the honour of the prancing horse.

Every race since the summer break – be it his apology for his comments at Zandvoort, his unflattering comparison to Mercedes at Monza or his initial refusal to stop with a damaged car in Madrid – has brought something new.

This time feels different – more venomous – from the many awkward moments of 2025, which could mostly be put down to a clash of cultures and a basic lack of cohesion between a newly signed driver and his unfamiliar race engineer.

Instead, Hamilton’s recent complaints seem rooted in an Alonso-esque resentment that Ferrari has spurned a chance that, at least in his mind, was right there in front of them.

There is not much patience left here. It doesn’t take much provocation for Hamilton’s frustration to come to the surface.

And as history tells us, once those cracks open between a driver and a team – especially this team – it is difficult to seal them back up again.

Even on a weekend when Ferrari was cut adrift from the front in Baku, those same tensions were evident in an untelevised team radio exchange in qualifying.

Frustrated by the pit wall failing to respond to his request for information, Lewis eventually just gave up and told the team he would check one of the television screens dotted around the track instead.

The full exchange went as follows:

Hamilton: “I’ve got no one ahead of me.”

Ferrari: “There is Russell who is 30 seconds in front.”

Hamilton: “What do I do? I got nobody ahead. How far am I off, please? Give me some update.”

Ferrari: “We are P7.”

Hamilton: “OK. How… oh, don’t worry. I’ll look on the TV.”

It would be amusing were it not so excruciating to listen to.

To repeat the point from Monza: this will not end well.

No, Lando Norris: Franco Colapinto does not deserve a race ban

Lando Norris has a history of making emotional comments to the media after a frustrating race.

You might recall that after his tangle with Max Verstappen at the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix, Lando stamped his feet, stuck his bottom lip out and told the world he wouldn’t be friends with him anymore unless Max offered an apology.

Rumours that he also threatened to take his ball home could not be verified.

A few days later at Silverstone, a sheepish Norris was the one ceding ground as he clarified that he now saw no reason for Verstappen to apologise after all.

Expect peace to once again break out in the playground before Malaysia next weekend.

If Romain Grosjean’s act of lunacy at the start of the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix set the bar for instant one-race bans in modern Formula 1, Colapinto’s loss of concentration at the restart in Baku falls well short.

And Franco might find that once Flavio Briatore and Steve Nielsen are done with him after this, he has suffered enough.

Colapinto may consider himself fortunate that he is already safe for next season having signed an extension to his Alpine contract last month.

For all the strides he has taken in 2026 (three times this season he has finished inside the top seven), most of his Alpine career has been spent on shaky ground.

Any pretence that Briatore had pulled off the deal of the century with the signing of Colapinto from Williams was blown to pieces within a few races of him replacing Jack Doohan last season.

Recall also that he was publicly rebuked by Nielsen in Austin last year for disobeying team orders and overtaking Pierre Gasly.

Taking out his teammate in Baku, when Alpine was on course for points with both cars, will not endear him to the team any further.

Especially not at a time Alpine is fighting to recover the points lost from Gasly’s stripped podium finish in Monaco.

It is always revealing when someone of Norris’s stature – the reigning world champion no less – feels emboldened to speak so personally and disrespectfully against a fellow driver.

One suspects he is not alone in his lowly opinion of Colapinto’s abilities.

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!

Read next: How Azerbaijan GP exposed a problem F1 simply cannot fix