Russell won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from pole by 0.196 s over Verstappen, with Hadjar third. He led all 51 laps, which makes it look simple. It was not. For 30 laps he built a lead, the Safety Car on lap 31 took it away, and the race was decided in the 13 laps after the second restart. Seven cars did not finish.
Race trace, full race: every driver's position, lap by lap.
A lead built on the harder tyre
Russell started on a used set of mediums. Second and third on the grid, Leclerc and Piastri, started on new softs. Piastri took second on the opening lap and held it for 35 laps, but he could not stay with the medium-shod leader: by our timing-stream measurement the gap grew from about 1.4 s after lap 1 to about 11.5 s after lap 30. Verstappen, eighth on the grid, was third by lap 6 and stayed there for thirty laps, about 12.5 s behind the leader.
Two Safety Cars, two stops for everyone
The Safety Car came out on lap 31 and 18 of the 19 cars still running pitted under it. That erased Russell's lead: at the line after lap 35, Verstappen was under half a second behind. The restart on lap 36 lasted one corner. Norris, Gasly and Colapinto were taken out at Turn 1, the Safety Car came back out, and all 16 cars still running stopped again. Every finisher pitted under both Safety Cars.
Thirteen laps against Verstappen
Verstappen took second from Piastri at the lap 36 restart, so when racing resumed on lap 39 the first two were Russell and Verstappen, both on softs. On every lap from there to the flag the gap stayed under a second. Russell was the quicker of the two on 8 of those 13 laps, and on lap 49, under the most pressure of his day, he set the fastest lap of the race, 1:44.916. The final margin was 0.196 s. The same choice of tyre is what separated Verstappen from his teammate: Hadjar took mediums at both stops and was 10.7 s behind at the flag.
Who moved
Piastri had the worst afternoon of the leaders. He was third after the restart, and on lap 40 he lost about 11 s in a single lap, a 1:58.595 that was deleted for track limits at Turn 1, and fell from third to fifteenth. He finished 14th, eleven places below his grid slot. Our data shows the time lost, not its cause.
Antonelli went the other way. He stopped on track in Q1, missed Q2 and started 16th. He gained fourteen places on track, joint most in the field, the Turn 1 pile-up cleared three cars in front of him, and he finished fifth. Lindblad came from 15th to 7th. Leclerc and Hamilton ran identical strategies and finished fourth and sixth; Leclerc was quicker on 35 of their 50 shared laps.
What decided it
Russell won the race twice. The first lead, built over thirty laps on the harder tyre, counted for nothing. The second, a gap he had to defend from the lap 39 restart with Verstappen never more than a second behind, was the one that mattered. It began with his pole lap in qualifying, 1:42.526, set as the chequered flag came out and 0.837 s clear of Leclerc: starting at the front, he met every restart at the front.