Uncovered: Russell’s rise from the sick bed to the podium in Baku

After a phenomenal drive in what was not the easiest weekend for George Russell, the Briton managed to secure yet another podium – his seventh of the season.

How Russell and Mercedes, with excellent strategy and driving, managed to “jump” the cars ahead of him is revealed with the help of telemetry data.

From fifth to second, Mercedes’ smart strategy put George Russell on the podium

George Russell, alongside Max Verstappen, was the only driver within the top five to start the race on hard tyres – a strategy that later proved to be much stronger.

One of the main reasons for this was that, apart from the opening lap, we did not have a single incident that would bring out the Safety Car. This allowed the drivers who had started on hards to stay out longer, with equally good pace, and later have greater freedom in choosing the timing of their pit stop.

In a race with such low grip as this one in Baku, overtaking was difficult, meaning that track position was much more valuable.

Despite being on the harder tyres, Russell had a better restart in Lap 5 after the Safety Car, compared to his teammate ahead. This gave him the chance to attack into T1, but the rookie defended excellently and kept his place. George braked harder than usual into T1, even though his teammate had left enough room, which Tsunoda behind took advantage of to steal P5.

In the image below, you can see the moment where George lost speed in the corner and then lost his position.

However, just a few laps later the Briton managed to regain the position, and with clean air ahead of him it did not take long before he closed in on Antonelli.

Dirty air prevented him from overtaking Kimi, even though on the radio he said he felt he had better pace and could more easily pass Lawson. For the next few laps he remained trapped in the DRS zone and, more importantly for his race, lost time compared to Sainz. Since Kimi had started the race on mediums, the team called him in on Lap 19, which left Russell in clean air and allowed him to immediately improve his race pace.

Had this decision been made earlier it would surely have helped Russell in the rest of the race, but the team were probably waiting for the best possible moment to call Kimi, so as not to put him back out behind slower cars.

After that, even George himself could feel that he had good pace, and over the radio he suggested to his engineer that they extend the first stint.

Since Lawson and Sainz both went to the pits shortly afterwards, Russell, with smart strategy, gave himself clean air all the way until Lap 40 when he made his stop.

During this period, he was, alongside Max, the fastest on track. If we compare the lap times from Laps 29 to 39, when Sainz had the advantage of much fresher tyres, Russell was still on average a tenth quicker per lap.

And this is exactly what allowed him to constantly increase his gap to Sainz. When the gap was large enough, the team made the call and brought their driver in. A quick pit stop and Russell came out just 1.3 seconds ahead of Sainz, now officially in P2.

Until the end of the race the Briton controlled the pace, and with newer and faster tyres compared to the drivers behind, his position was never under threat. Had Sainz been on the same strategy as the Mercedes driver, his chances for P2 would certainly have been much greater.

After a weekend that was by no means easy, with Russell suffering health problems at the beginning of it, he explained afterwards that the cooler air temperature and the characteristics of the circuit definitely helped Mercedes to achieve a very good result.

The only circuit so far this season where they had managed to score more points was Canada, another street track, with both the conditions and characteristics very similar to Azerbaijan.

With the 30 points scored in Baku, they managed to overtake Ferrari for P2 in the Constructors’ standings.

Unfortunately for the German team based in Britain, there will not be many more circuits like this, since from now until the end of the calendar only Las Vegas has characteristics that could suit the W16.

The current gap between these two teams is only four points, so with an exciting calendar ahead of us, we can definitely expect a very tight battle.

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