The largest pole position margin in a dry qualifying session in 34 years and the largest pole position margin in his racing career. 0.859 seconds. That sums up a qualifying performance that is worthy of a bow — or rather, a T-pose.
Nicknamed Mr Saturday for his stellar qualifying performances during his time at Williams, George Russell has topped the session once again. But can he really be called Mr Saturday if the Baku qualifying session happened on a Friday?
Not only did George Russell live up to the name after he won the race (on a Saturday), he did so in style by achieving his first Grand Slam.
A Grand Slam is awarded to F1 drivers who secure pole position, lead every lap of the race and set the fastest lap. Winning an F1 race is already a notable feat but doing so with such control that you don’t concede a single lap is even more remarkable. In all of F1’s history, only 29 drivers have achieved this triumph.
Russell’s weekend started by topping both FP1 and FP2 – early signs of promise. This was then followed up with a good session in FP3, only second behind Max Verstappen, before the aforementioned monstrous qualifying performance later that afternoon.
A quick and clean launch off the line meant that he retained his top spot in the early stages of the actual race. The gap to second — Oscar Piastri — increased until Russell had created a gap of over nine seconds to the nearest car. It all seemed to be going according to plan without any major incidents, until Lap 31, where Alex Albon’s Williams found the wall and caused a safety car. The majority of drivers, including Russell, sensibly used the window where the race was neutralised to change tyres and mitigate some of the time lost during a pit stop.
This was the moment where fans could feel the hope of a Grand Slam really start to manifest; without a safety car, it is likely that many drivers in the top ten would have been on differing pit strategies which would create ‘net’ positions and send drivers tumbling down the order if they pitted while others stayed in. Russell was fortunate that all other cars behind him followed him into the pits and he was able to reemerge as the leading car since his closest challengers were all behind him in the pit lane.
From then on, it was a true sprint to the finish line with Max Verstappen steadily closing in on Russell. There was no rest for the driver or his fans as the gap between first and second narrowed until the final lap where Russell edged out Verstappen by 0.1 seconds. A nail-biting finish rounded off a remarkable race for George Russell in what he describes “one of the strongest [races] of [his] career so far.”
It will be interesting to see whether this trajectory will carry forward to next weekend’s race in Malaysia; if Russell maximises the points from Sepang, the title race may well and truly be on, as teammate Antonelli seemed to falter in Azerbaijan despite an incredible run of form.
“George Russell, British GP 2022 (52381430692) (cropped)” by Jen Ross is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
