GEORGE RUSSELL TAKES AZERBAIJAN GP POLE AS ANTONELLI CRASHES OUT

George Russell claimed pole position for Mercedes at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, finishing 0.837 seconds clear of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in second place. His Mercedes team-mate and championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, crashed out in the first qualifying session after hitting the inside wall at Turn One in Baku. Antonelli, who leads Russell by 81 points in the drivers' championship, will start Saturday's race in 16th place. McLaren's Oscar Piastri qualified third, ahead of Red Bull's Isack Hadjar in fourth and McLaren's Lando Norris in fifth.

Lewis Hamilton took sixth after his lap was affected by running without a tow from another car, finishing ahead of Alpine's Pierre Gasly and Red Bull's Max Verstappen. Verstappen had been following Norris to gain a slipstream on his final lap, but Norris ran off track, ending Verstappen's chances of a front-row start. Russell said it was probably the biggest margin of his career, adding that the lap "felt really sweet" and the car had been "feeling great all weekend". Leclerc said he had expected second place but not the size of the gap to Russell. It was Russell's first pole since the Austrian Grand Prix in June.

Williams' Carlos Sainz secured the team's first top-10 qualifying result of the season, helped by a new chassis introduced for the Baku weekend. The update brought Williams down to the minimum weight limit for the first time this year, having been up to 25kg over the limit earlier in the season. Antonelli's weekend had already been disrupted by reliability problems that cost him half of Thursday's practice running. The Azerbaijan Grand Prix takes place on Saturday 26 September at 12:00 BST.