George Russell has seven Azerbaijan Grand Prix starts and four podiums, and every one of them has arrived since he moved to Mercedes. The two years before that produced nothing at all. The most recent one produced the win.
Seventy eight points, a win from pole in 2026, and one habit that is hard to ignore underneath it: he started fifth at Baku three times and climbed onto the podium on all three occasions.
Two years of nothing, then a podium habit, then the win
Russell's first two visits came with Williams and they went the way Williams weekends went in that era. Sixteenth on the grid and fifteenth at the flag in 2019, two laps down. Fifteenth on the grid in 2021, then a gearbox failure that left him classified seventeenth. No points, and no realistic route to any.
The Mercedes move changed the shape of it straight away. He qualified fifth in 2022 and finished third, the first podium of his Azerbaijan career.
2023 is the outlier. Eleventh on the grid was his worst Saturday in a Mercedes here, and eighth at the flag for five points made it the only year with the team that he left Baku without a trophy.
Then the pattern returned. Fifth on the grid again in 2024, third again. Fifth on the grid again in 2025, and this time second. In 2026 he finally started from the front, took his first Azerbaijan pole and led it to the flag, holding Max Verstappen off by 0.196 seconds in the closest finish the race has ever had.
Three starts from fifth, three podiums. At a track where the received wisdom is that you finish roughly where you start, he keeps finding two or three places that are not obviously available.
George Russell's Azerbaijan GP record year by year
Every Azerbaijan Grand Prix start, with the grid slot it came from and what it was worth.
| Season | Grid | Finish | Points | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 16 | P15 | 0 | Williams |
| 2021 | 15 | P17 | 0 | Williams |
| 2022 | 5 | P3 | 15 | Mercedes |
| 2023 | 11 | P8 | 5 | Mercedes |
| 2024 | 5 | P3 | 15 | Mercedes |
| 2025 | 5 | P2 | 18 | Mercedes |
| 2026 | 1 | P1 | 25 | Mercedes |
Third, third, second, first
All 78 of his Azerbaijan points have come in the last five years, and 73 of them in the four podium finishes. The Williams seasons contribute nothing to the total, which is a description of the machinery rather than a criticism of the driver.
Read the Mercedes years in order and the climb is almost too neat: third, eighth, third, second, first. He also set the fastest lap in 2026 in the W17, the one piece of a Baku weekend he had never collected here before. Seven starts, and this has gone from the circuit that gave him nothing to the one that has given him more than any other.
