Winners and losers from F1's 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Team-mates colliding, the world champion calling for a driver to be banned, a win drought broken, a top team resurgent and a returnee on the podium - there was plenty going on in Formula 1's 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Here's our take on who came out best and worst.
Loser: Franco Colapinto (DNF)
After a couple of encouraging signs at Monza - where Franco Colapinto was fast but made errors - and Madring - where Colapinto was quicker than Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly and arguably executed his best weekend yet in F1 - he went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid.
A few drivers spoke out in his defence. Carlos Sainz addressed the tricky tyres, dirty circuit and weird power delivery of the engines in Baku, while Arvid Lindblad criticised the way the safety car restarts were handled.
But ultimately Colapinto was the only one to lock both front wheels and clatter into two cars at once. When one of those cars is your team-mate's you really are in trouble. He at least took "full responsibility" - not that there was much else he could do in the circumstances.
And because he couldn't serve the 10 second time penalty the stewards gave him, that will mean a grid penalty for Sepang. - Ben Anderson
Loser: Alpine (2x DNF)
From looking odds on for a double points finish to actually achieving a catastrophic double DNF in the space of one major Colapinto braking misjudgement.
This was ultimately a disastrous conclusion to the weekend for Alpine, after producing what Gasly called "the best race car we've had so far this year".
Colapinto wiping out both Gasly and the McLaren of Lando Norris not only robbed Alpine of at least the seven championship points they were holding before it all went wrong, it also created the conditions for Lindblad to bag the seventh place Gasly was holding and extend the gap Racing Bulls holds over Alpine to 15 points in their battle for fifth in the constructors' title race. - BA
Winner: Isack Hadjar (3rd)
April 21 2024. That's how far you have to go back for Red Bull's most recent double podium before Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar's 2-3 finish in Baku. It's frankly an absurd stat for a team that, despite its troubles, has so obviously remained among F1's top operators throughout that time.
This was as good a performance as we've seen from Hadjar since his graduation to the senior team - he acknowledged as much, saying it was the "first time with the team that I actually get to do a very clean weekend" - all the more impressive considering it came on his first weekend back from injury.
He was effective in battle, understood the assignment when Verstappen closed up to him, and played the team game like a pro. Even the radio messages felt like they were a little less terse than usual here.
If he was looking to show Red Bull what it had been missing while he was out, this was a damn good way to do it. - Jack Cozens
Loser: McLaren (14th and DNF)
Turn 1 felt as if actively malicious to the McLarens this Saturday, with two offs and one crash that meant zero points on a weekend the team really should have outscored the power-limited Ferraris.
Norris seemed up against it (speed-limited by an issue but also clearly just in a bit of a funk) throughout the entirety of the weekend, so took the crash with the Alpines - shortly after he'd messed up his own race already by visiting the run-off at the same corner - as a final insult to cap off a miserable outing.
He was unsparing in his assessment of Colapinto's error, but also just unhappy about his race.
"I had no chance out there with the speed I had," he lamented. "Sure there were some things I wasn't doing well enough in driving and I need to see what I could improve next time, but at the same time, the speed that they came past me, that was impossible. So it was a pretty impossible task out there."
But team-mate Oscar Piastri was doing stellar work in the fight for a podium until it was undone by a strange lock-up of both fronts that sent him down the order.
"I didn't think I did anything spectacular [to cause it]," he mused. "Obviously I was on a different line to what I normally would be, defending, so I don't know if I was on a crown in the road or something, but it certainly was a surprise to me." - Val Khorounzhiy
Winner: George Russell (1st)
George Russell's victory from pole position, which he described as "the most dominant weekend I've had in my career" validates the progress he's spoken repeatedly about making since the August break.
After all, while he was given a clear run by title rival Kimi Antonelli clipping the Turn 1 wall in qualifying, Russell was genuinely quick and looked to have a pace advantage over his Mercedes team-mate anyway.
"I'm very proud of the resilience that I and my close group of engineers have shown during the tough periods this year, because there's been a lot of hard work to overcome some of the challenges to adapt my driving style to suit this new car better," said Russell. "F1 is so tough you don't get opportunities to practice this.
"And finally, it's coming to me a bit more intuitively than it once did, and I'm gaining confidence. And especially on circuits like this, it just allows you to eke out that little bit more on the brakes, get that little bit closer to the walls, and it's been a flawless weekend." - Edd Straw
Loser: Valtteri Bottas (DNF)
Fastest race lap is usually a rubbish metric to measure performance in an F1 race, but Valtteri Bottas's being 1.5s down on what Cadillac team-mate Sergio Perez managed does seem reflective of the race we saw.
Even before his crash at the end of the race - attributed to a harvesting glitch triggered by an earlier off at Turn 1, as "the systems got a bit confused" - the performance was properly, head-scratchingly miserable.
"A long one," Bottas admitted. "Just, honestly, no pace at all. I could only fight with Fernando [Alonso]. For sure, we lost some time there, but otherwise just pretty far off, so lots of things to look into from this weekend."
"Pretty far off" is an understatement - Bottas was nearly a minute down on Perez at the time of his first pitstop, so whatever was wrong was very wrong - and has to be a huge priority for himself and Cadillac to figure out. - VK
Winner: Max Verstappen (2nd)
This was Verstappen and Red Bull's strongest weekend in terms of pace and the fact he finished just two tenths of a second behind winner Russell despite a power unit disadvantage is proof of the progress Red Bull is making.
While his victory chances might have been boosted had he started where he should have done on the front row, instead of eighth thanks to a power unit problem, Verstappen suspects that it would have been difficult to have done better than second anyway.
"Even if I started second, I think the pace of George would have been very hard to pass," said Verstappen.
But the fact Red Bull was a genuine victory contender in Azerbaijan (a rarity in 2026) and the tantalising possibility that starting where he should have done could have led to victory, is a much-needed boost for Verstappen. - ES
Loser: Alex Albon (DNF)
After Carlos Sainz was given a five-place penalty having initially qualified in ninth, Alex Albon was given the chance to avenge the defeat from his Williams team-mate, given he was dumped out in Q2.
He was keeping Esteban Ocon behind in 13th when he crashed at Turn 3, locking up and heading straight into the wall. Sainz recovered from dropping to 19th with an early stop to come back and score a point.
Albon said the incident was "odd". He reckoned a combination of a big wind gust, and the Williams car's characteristic of raising a wheel under heavy braking, could have caused the incident, although he still acknowledged his need to hold his hands up for it.
A big opportunity missed, especially to outperform his team-mate, who repeatedly bounced back from adversity this weekend. - Jack Benyon
Winner: Arvid Lindblad (7th)
After consecutive crashes in FP2s at the Madring and in Baku, Lindblad was struggling for confidence entering this race, and even though it wasn't the perfect way to do it, leading the midfield and bagging big points in Sunday's race will be a nice boost.
First, the elephant in the room, his contact with team-mate Racing Bulls Liam Lawson on the lap 39 safety car restart.
Lindblad claimed Ocon "basically moved under braking" so he "had to take avoiding action which meant I locked the front slightly and I hit Liam".
Whatever the accuracy of those mitigating circumstances (a review of the angles suggested Ocon wasn't doing so), Lindblad escaped unpunished and inadvertently benefitted from the chaos.
He also criticised the slackness of the start and how it was poorly formed up, causing drivers to accelerate then brake repeatedly.
After that, he pulled off some epic overtakes in the final stint and capitalised on Ocon's poor run to the line to take seventh by 0.030s.
It moves him to within four points of Gasly and a place in the drivers' championship top 10, and extends Racing Bulls midfield constructors' lead by six points to 15. Great recovery. - JB
Loser: Audi (11th & 13th)
With Alpine having taken itself out of the Azerbaijan GP and McLaren in a world of woe, Baku should have been the perfect opportunity for Audi to bag some decent points.
Instead, a major upgrade that arrived for this weekend was not enough to help Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto into the top 10 as Audi lost big ground to closest rival Haas.
The lost opportunity owed a lot to its Achilles' Heel: a lack of engine power. It's struggled all season with it and it left both drivers unable to do much on Saturday.
Bortoleto typified the situation when he said the Audi was "flying" in sector two, but was all at sea on the run across the start-finish line.
"On the straights, we were super slow," he said. "I was leaving the last corner, I think, 0.2 seconds from Liam for like five laps, and I couldn't overtake him at the end of this straight. I couldn't be closer than that!" - Jon Noble
Winner: Haas (8th & 9th)
A bittersweet return to the points here for Haas?
Perhaps, considering Ocon's final-straight defeat in the fight for seventh place with Lindblad, in part a consequence of Ocon backing off after cutting the corner passing Bottas's Cadillac and 'overdoing' said bit of backing off.
But neither Ocon nor ninth-place finisher Ollie Bearman seemed to mind too much at the flag. This is just a third points finish of the year (and a best to date) for Ocon who, in the week where it emerged he is heading for the Haas exit, said of his result "I deserved that, not all the rest of this year".
The relief was palpable for Bearman, too, as he ended an even longer wait for points that had stretched back to the Canadian GP in May.
And beyond the breaking of those point-less streaks, and the six-point gain on an Audi team that somehow failed to score, don't underestimate the significance of Haas finally getting two cars into broadly the same competitive window - and being able to reap rewards for doing so. - JC
Loser: Aston Martin (2x DNF)
Aston Martin's upgraded chassis and Honda power unit was supposed to have turned the corner on its season – but Azerbaijan proved to be another race to forget.
Both cars retired – Lance Stroll out early with a water pressure problem while Fernando Alonso's exit came after what he described as a mysterious power loss down the straight that was costing him 1.5-seconds alone (Honda said no engine issue has been identified as it stands).
The race trouble came after little sign of promising pace all weekend, as the deficits in the Aston Martin package remained obvious. Stroll bemoaned it simply as a lack of downforce and a lack of power.
For Alonso, who continues to weigh up his F1 future, it is fairly clear where step forward has got to come from.
"When we press the throttle pedal, when we go on the straight, we need to rely on Honda getting better and better," he said.
"We made a step forward this year with the engine upgrade, but obviously, as we see, there is not enough, and we need to keep on going." - JN
