Winners and losers from the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

McLaren’s constructors’ title will have to wait another weekend after Oscar Piastri crashed out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

He was one of the race’s major losers — and we’ve got the rest (as well as our winners) listed here.

Winners and losers from the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Winner: Max Verstappen

If anyone was foolish enough to doubt Max Verstappen, they’ll have reason to eat their words following the reigning champion’s second pole-to-victory success in as many races.

Verstappen was the only driver to usurp Carlos Sainz’s flying lap in Q3 on Saturday after a slew of red flags and rain transformed track conditions, and the driver went on to secure yet another grand chelem: Winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from pole position, leading every lap, and setting the fastest lap in the competition. All without blinking an eye.

Oh, and the championship? Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris may be getting all the headlines, but Verstappen still has an outside shot at retaining the drivers’ title this season. It’s still a bit too early to firmly hedge your bets on him, but a few more wins, and we could see a fascinating end to the F1 2025 season.

Loser: Oscar Piastri

The championship leader had the most disastrous race of his F1 2025 season so far.

When the lights went out, Oscar Piastri jumped the start before seeming to activate antistall. McLaren remained at a standstill as the rest of the field flew by the ninth-placed driver and left him dead last in the running order following a messy qualifying session.

His bad day got even worse just a few corners later when he buried the nose of his MCL39 in the wall at Turn 5, prompting his first retirement in 34 races.

Two errors in as many minutes following his error in qualifying signals that the Australian driver is feeling the pressure of this championship, with his 31-point gap nowhere near enough to assure him that victory is in sight.

And it also means that McLaren will not be able to secure the World Cup Constructors’ Championship at Baku; the team needed to finish at least 1-3 for that to be the case.

Winner: George Russell

A respiratory infection kept George Russell away from the race track on Thursday’s media day, and the Mercedes driver both sounded and looked rough throughout the weekend. Yet F1 2025’s dark horse once again showed the consistency that has come to define his career by finishing an impressive second.

Mercedes in general looked strong throughout the Azerbaijan weekend, but Russell himself had quite an up-and-down start in Baku, dropping as far back as sixth before battling his way back up to second.

Between Russell and Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes duo did its best to maximize its performance, scooping up more points toward its constructors’ championship battle.

More from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix:

? Eleven moments of Azerbaijan GP chaos as F1 returns to Baku

? Winners and losers from the 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying

Loser: Lando Norris

With his teammate out of the running, Lando Norris had a major shot at carving down the gap between himself and Oscar Piastri in the championship standings. Instead, he finished in the same position he started, seventh, and could only claw back six points.

Now, that’s not entirely his fault, because he was once again plagued by a slow pit stop from his McLaren crew that certainly hurt. But throughout the race, Norris was unable to claw back any time to the competition, and he failed to mount a successful pass on Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda ahead of him.

The Briton told media after the race that he felt he’d gotten close to maximizing performance, that “I’m doing the best I can in every race.”

But even without pointing the finger of blame in any specific direction, the mere fact that Norris’ best shot at making serious inroads ended in an unspectacular manner makes him a loser this weekend.

Winner: Carlos Sainz

It’s official: Carlos Sainz has secured a grand prix podium with Williams before the driver who replaced him, Lewis Hamilton, snagged one with Ferrari. But that’s only one of the multitude of stats the Spanish driver can be happy about.

The 15 points he scored for his third-place finish is just one point shy of his previous points total for the entire 2025 season. He’s rocketed six positions up the WDC standings to sig 12th. He won Driver of the Day. He also secured Williams’ first podium since Spa 2021 — or, if you’re more interested in counting full races and not two laps behind the safety car, then it’s the first Williams podium since Baku 2017. Williams has now crested the 100-point mark in the championship standings, further cementing its place in fifth.

Speaking to media in the post-race FIA press conference, Sainz stressed that he’s been confident in his move to Williams, and that he’s had strong pace. The main issue is that he hasn’t been able to put together a strong weekend, for one reason or another.

Baku offered the team an opportunity to put a strong race together, and Sainz pulled through.

It begs the question: If this is how Williams can perform in a season it has largely written off in favor of preparing for the future, then what can they achieve in 2026?

Loser: Alex Albon

Carlos Sainz had a great race, but teammate Alex Albon was not anywhere near as lucky. He was the first crash to bring out a red flag in qualifying, which saw him mired in the rear of the grid at the start.

He had a big task ahead of him, and unfortunately, he went on to collide with Franco Colapinto in the middle of a desperate overtake attempt that netted him a 10-second penalty for avoidable contact.

It was a messy weekend altogether for Albon, and his lack of performance saw him leapfrogged by Kimi Antonelli in the championship standings.

He does earn kudos for putting the difficult day behind him to join the Williams team in celebrating Sainz’s podium.

Winner: Kimi Antonelli

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff branded his rookie driver “underwhelming” after a messy Italian Grand Prix, and Kimi Antonelli admitted that his primary task in Baku was to have “a clean weekend to regain the momentum I had.”

That looked like far too much to ask for early in the weekend; even as early as Q1, Antonelli needed some words of motivation from Wolff instructing him to stay cool and stay on top of his performance.

But the longer qualifying stretched on, the more stable Antonelli became.  Antonelli qualified fourth and went on to finish there — not his best performance to date, but his most promising one since his inaugural podium in Canada.

While Toto Wolff has stated that Mercedes intends to retain Antonelli and Russell for the F1 2026 season, that announcement remains unofficial until the contracts are signed. But this will certainly do a lot to enable Antonelli to regain his confidence and, ideally, enter the remaining races with higher morale.

Loser: Alpine

It’s hard to overstate just what a disaster Azerbaijan — and, admittedly, much of the F1 2025 season — has been for Alpine.

The duo lined up 16th (Franco Colapinto) and 18th (Pierre Gasly) on the starting grid after both were knocked out of qualifying at the first time of asking. And, aside from Colapinto being spun by Albon, neither driver justified much coverage time on the broadcast.

At the checkered flag, Gasly and Colapinto were the final two drivers classified, and the only two cars to have been lapped by race leader Max Verstappen.

Alpine remains dead last in the championship standings with just 20 points, and there’s nothing about its pace to suggest that it could take a higher finish.

Read next: Data reveals how Max Verstappen turned the tables on Sainz with Baku pole