Another Baku F1 twist as Russell tops final practice

Mercedes driver George Russell set the stage for what should be a tightly-contested Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying battle by setting the pace in FP3 by just 0.013s from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

Key moments:

• Russell leads Leclerc by 0.013s
• Red Bull struggling in final sector
• Colapinto shines for Williams
• Ocon thwarted by another failure
• Bearman crashes on third lap
• Grid penalty for Zhou

In a stop-start session interrupted by two red flags, one triggered when Esteban Ocon’s Alpine ground to a halt and the other when Haas debutant Oliver Bearman crashed at Turn 1, Russell banged in his fastest time with two minutes remaining.

Ocon’s session came to an end early on, at the end of his outlap. That followed problems in FP1 when he also stopped before he’d set a laptime after an MGU-H problem.

Ocon was launching his first flying lap in FP3 when the power delivery stuttered coming out of the Turn 16 left-hander. Although he was asked to return to the pits, he didn’t get close to making it and stopped on track. He was instructed to do an “ERS jump out”, suggesting further concerns about the hybrid parts of the engine as the car wasn’t showing as safe.

Bearman’s incident was more spectacular, the rookie braking too late for Turn 1 and also too late in attempting to bail out.

Although he took to the escape road, he caught the front-left wheel on the barrier and that pulled the left side of the car into the wall. He was apologetic, declaring “I am such an idiot” over the radio.

Bearman’s crash happened with just over 27 minutes remaining, so after a five-minute stoppage there was then a 22-minute session in which the order on the timesheets was set. But Russell left it late to hit the top.

That lap was on Russell’s third attempt on his second set of softs, although the first qualifying simulation lap was aborted early when he took to the escape road at Turn 2. He benefitted from a slight tow from Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari at the end of his quickest lap to jump to the top of the timesheets.

Leclerc had been in first place prior to that, having jumped ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who had been the first of the frontrunners to post a time on his final set of softs. The Ferrari driver then made a small improvement on his final lap in an attempt to reclaim top spot from Russell, but fell just short.

Lando Norris set the third-fastest time, 0.223s off the pace and just 0.012s quicker than team-mate Piastri as the McLarens ended up third and fourth. Just over a tenth behind Piastri was Max Verstappen, who made a small improvement on his final lap to end up 0.348s down.

Sainz and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez rounded out the top seven, with Lewis Hamilton the only top-team absentee from the frontrunning group down in 10th place, having failed to hook a proper lap together.

Williams was the standout midfield team, with Alex Albon setting the eight-fastest time just 0.680s off the pace. Team-mate Franco Colapinto was just 0.044s behind, showing he’d recovered well from his FP1 crash yesterday.

Aston Martin duo Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll ended up 11th and 13th, separated by a tenth of a second, with RB’s Yuki Tsunoda slotted in between after what he described as a ‘messy’ session.

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was 15th-fastest, just behind the second RB of Daniel Ricciardo, in what was a difficult session for Alpine, with Nico Hulkenberg the lead Haas in 16th and the Saubers taking up their now-customary position at the back.

It is a position at least one of them - Zhou Guanyu - is assured of for the starting grid, as he has been penalised for having exceeded his season's allocation of new energy stores and control electronics.