Was Colapinto's Penalty Fair? Baku GP 2026 Review
George Russell won the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix by 0.196 seconds, holding off Max Verstappen at the end of a Baku race that was quiet for half its length and then very much not.
Round 15 of the Formula 1 season, run on Saturday 26 September 2026, was settled by a late yellow flag, a boost problem on the winning Mercedes and a restart crash that took out three cars. This episode covers all of it, along with the penalty argument that followed and what the result says about the championship, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull.
The restart crash is where the episode begins, because it did the most to shape the race and the week that came after it. When the field got going again after the first safety car, Franco Colapinto reached Turn 1 on the inside, locked his front tyres and slid into his Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly, who was then pushed into Lando Norris. All three cars were out on the spot. Alpine had both drivers inside the points at the time, and Colapinto's apology afterwards was direct. He said sorry to Gasly, to the factory and to everyone else caught up in it.
The reaction on the show shifts as the discussion goes on. The first instinct, formed while watching live, was to come down hard on him. A second look at the footage softens that, and the crash starts to look like a driver who overcooked a lock-up and not someone who was being reckless. The stewards were less generous. Their report said he braked too late and arrived at a speed that made the corner impossible to take in control, and they judged him wholly or predominantly to blame.
Norris was angry enough to call for a race ban before he had even seen a replay. The episode has some sympathy for that, since he was having a poor weekend anyway and was then taken out by somebody else's mistake. The expectation is that he will have calmed down by the time the next race weekend begins and will soften what he said.
The penalty became its own debate. The standard punishment for causing a collision is 10 seconds, but Colapinto had retired and could not serve it, so the stewards turned it into a five-place grid drop at the next race in Malaysia. The show finds that a little harsh for a mistake with no malice in it, particularly when Alpine have already paid for it in lost points. Flavio Briatore called the error unacceptable for a driver with Colapinto's experience and said the team would take time to decide whether to act internally. Nobody on the show is sure what that action could be, beyond a fine.
The sharper argument is about what happened to Arvid Lindblad at the very same corner. The Racing Bulls driver ran into his team-mate Liam Lawson and nothing was done about it. For the show, that points to a wider problem, which is that penalties tend to follow the outcome of an incident and not the action that caused it. A small time penalty, perhaps five seconds, would have felt more consistent. In fairness to the stewards, their written explanation described the contact as a chain reaction. Cars ahead braked hard because of the Colapinto lock-up, Lindblad was boxed in on both sides, and they concluded that no driver was predominantly to blame. Whether that sits comfortably next to the Colapinto decision is a question the episode leaves open.
For Racing Bulls it turned out well. Lindblad started 15th and finished seventh, Lawson came home 12th, and the team moved ahead of Alpine in the fight for fifth in the constructors' championship, 83 points to 68 according to Speedweek. The show rates both teams highly for how clearly they organise their drivers, and expects Alpine to win back some of the lost ground in Malaysia if the strategy calls go their way.
Take away the restart and the race was a procession for long periods. Russell took pole by a clear margin, led from the start and was more than 10 seconds ahead by mid-distance. The first safety car, called after Alex Albon crashed, erased that gap and sent everybody into the pits for fresh tyres. This is where the show makes its main complaint. With every driver pitting at the same moment, nobody gambled and nobody lost out, so the strategy that might have made the second half interesting was gone before it began.
The blame is aimed at Pirelli and the current cars more than at Baku itself. A soft tyre that can run half the race, almost no pace difference between the soft and the medium, and a one-stop race under a safety car add up to very little for the teams to work with. The show wants softer compounds that force two or three stops, even if that brings a little more risk, and hopes the cars improve before the circuit's reputation suffers. Pirelli's own view was that the race largely matched what it expected, so the two sides are still some way apart.
The finish is what rescued the afternoon. Verstappen started eighth after an engine problem in qualifying, passed both Alpines on the first lap and was up to third by lap 7, then took second from Oscar Piastri around the restart. In the closing laps he was chasing Russell hard. Then Valtteri Bottas crashed at Turn 15 under a yellow flag. Russell lifted, and when he got back on the throttle his Mercedes had no turbo boost, which brought Verstappen right onto his gearbox at the line. Verstappen said the true gap was bigger than 0.196 seconds, closer to a second before the yellow appeared. The show wonders whether he lifted enough in the yellow sector and thinks the data would settle it, though the result was never changed.
Isack Hadjar finished third, 10.7 seconds behind the winner, which gave Red Bull its first double podium since China 2024, according to the team. The episode picks him as its driver of the race, because of how he ran in tandem with Verstappen and the attitude he showed on the radio, constantly asking to be allowed to attack. Verstappen did not give the place back, and in hindsight the show thinks that was the right call, since his tyres recovered a few laps later and he went on to threaten the win.
McLaren's weekend was a rough one. Norris was out after the restart crash, and Piastri, who had run in the podium places for most of the race, ended up 13th. The new sidepod parts may not be working as intended, but the show does not read much into it. Sepang has long straights and long corners, and that should suit the car better.
Ferrari finished fourth with Charles Leclerc and sixth with Lewis Hamilton, a result the show describes as there or thereabouts, neither a disaster nor a threat to the front. The belief is that the team has plateaued since the summer break while Red Bull and McLaren have moved forward, and that the other teams will keep getting faster. That feeds into the speculation about Frederic Vasseur's future, including a suggestion that Christian Horner could replace him. None of that is confirmed. The show doubts it would work, citing the baggage that comes with Horner, the ego of Ferrari itself and his history with Hamilton.
At the top, Russell's win matters for his confidence more than for the table. He took pole, controlled the race and recorded his third victory of 2026, his first since Austria in June and his first in Baku. Kimi Antonelli started the weekend 81 points clear in the standings, crashed in Q1, started 16th and came back to fifth. The AFP report on the race puts his lead at 66 points afterwards. The show points to his own comments about losing confidence after the crash and sees a driver who chose to take sensible points and not chase 25 and risk zero. One view is that Russell's win is a flash in the pan. The other is that it hardly matters, because Antonelli's cushion is large. Either way, the title looks like Antonelli's to lose.
The TMF predictor game did not go well. Both sets of picks leaned on Antonelli and Norris, Antonelli's Q1 crash wrecked the pole and fastest driver calls, and nothing came close in the podium order. For the Malaysian Grand Prix, listed this year as the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, the picks are bolder. One set backs Russell for pole and Antonelli for the fastest lap, with Antonelli, Norris and Leclerc on the podium. The other has Antonelli on pole and Verstappen with the fastest lap, with Antonelli, Verstappen and Russell as the top three. Formula 1 has not raced at Sepang since 2017, so there is hardly any data to lean on, and the cars are very different from those that last raced there.
Azerbaijan Grand Prix Top 10
Here is the top ten from Baku as classified by Formula 1 after penalties, with the points each finish earned.
Pos | Driver | Team | Gap to winner | Points |
1 | George Russell | Mercedes | 1:38:02.143 | 25 |
2 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | +0.196s | 18 |
3 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | +10.704s | 15 |
4 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | +14.136s | 12 |
5 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | +14.512s | 10 |
6 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | +22.382s | 8 |
7 | Arvid Lindblad | Racing Bulls | +31.159s | 6 |
8 | Esteban Ocon | Haas | +31.189s | 4 |
9 | Oliver Bearman | Haas | +31.929s | 2 |
10 | Carlos Sainz | Williams | +32.416s | 1 |
Drivers' Championship After Round 15
Pos | Driver | Team | Points |
1 | Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 302 |
2 | George Russell | Mercedes | 236 |
3 | Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 199 |
4 | Lando Norris | McLaren | 186 |
5 | Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 179 |
6 | Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 163 |
7 | Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 120 |
8 | Isack Hadjar | Red Bull | 86 |
9 | Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 59 |
10 | Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 41 |
In the constructors' championship Mercedes lead Ferrari by 160 points, while Racing Bulls hold fifth, 15 points clear of Alpine.
Constructors' Championship After Round 15
Pos | Team | Points |
1 | Mercedes | 538 |
2 | Ferrari | 378 |
3 | McLaren | 306 |
4 | Red Bull | 263 |
5 | Racing Bulls | 83 |
6 | Alpine | 68 |
7 | Haas | 27 |
8 | Audi | 17 |
9 | Williams | 12 |
10 | Aston Martin | 3 |
11 | Cadillac | 0 |
Results are the official classification for 26 September 2026. Standings are as they stood after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, before the Malaysian round, and are compiled from Crash.net.
Listeners can send their own pole, fastest lap and podium picks in the comments. Anyone who beats the show gets read out in the next episode.
Update: since the episode was recorded, Colapinto has picked up an additional 10-place grid penalty in Malaysia for an engine change, on top of the five-place drop discussed here.
Our Predictions for Bahrain
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