Not for the first time, Baku was the epitome of a race of two halves. A flavourless main course washed down with an indulgent dessert, triggered by a mid-race pair of safety cars. With one dab of the brake pedal, the lap 36 restart melee doubled the number of candidates for the loser category, while the list of winners boasts a number of unlikely heroes.

Things got a lot spicier than planned courtesy of the brace of safety car restarts, but this was George Russell's weekend. Imperious from start to finish with a pole-to-flag victory and a grand slam to boot.

On a messy weekend for Kimi Antonelli, partly due to his own making and partly because a lack of track time left the Italian on the back foot, Russell reconnected with his best form this season.

Too little too late, or just in time for an unexpected late-season comeback? That will likely depend more on Antonelli than on Russell, with the gap still a sizeable 66 points. But whatever Russell needed to address to hit his stride with the 2026 cars, it is starting to click.

"I think it’s just having more experience with this sort of new driving style I’ve adopted. And every race since the break, I feel like I’ve gone from strength to strength and I feel like more myself again. It’s been a really tough period for me, but I feel like I’ve come through the other side."

Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images

The only thing worse than crashing into your team-mate is taking out innocent bystanders with him. Alpine was not a happy camp to be in on Saturday night after all the hard work the team did to reclaim ground in the battle for fifth disappeared with one fell swoop into Pierre Gasly's sidepod.

Franco Colapinto's Baku blunder even prompted calls from his other victim, world champion Lando Norris, for a race ban. That could be classified as a heat of the moment comment, if it hadn't been for the fact the McLaren driver repeated it a number of times as he roamed the mixed zone.

A slight overreaction after a frustrating afternoon for Norris? Perhaps. But you somehow get the impression Colapinto's big boss Flavio Briatore wasn't all that impressed either...

"I know that Franco has taken full responsibility for it, as he should; in fact he braked far too late considering the context of the race and the safety car restart. It was a very poor move for a driver of his experience."

Flav. Never one to mince his words, often one to mince his drivers.

• 

  Formula 1Alpine's Flavio Briatore rips into Franco Colapinto's Baku blunder: "A very poor move"

• 

  Formula 1Franco Colapinto penalty revealed for causing Baku F1 pile-up

McLaren team boss and fellow Italian Andrea Stella said it best. "I guess this is being reviewed by the stewards and I'm sure it will be reviewed by Flavio as well. I'm not sure which one is going to be harsher..."

With Colapinto having impressed enough this season to earn a 2027 extension, the Baku incident will likely be forgiven. But knowing Briatore, it will not be forgotten.

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Was Sergio Perez simply outstanding or Valtteri Bottas just lacklustre? The otherwise unexplained chasm in performance between the two Cadillac drivers suggests it's a healthy serving of both.

Perez was mesmerising from the outset in Baku, reconnecting with his old reputation for being a street circuit monster, and putting his Cadillac up where it didn't deserve to be. As Bottas was bereft of pace, Perez entertained the company of the Audis during the first stint, soon pulling out a pitstop gap on his team-mate which ballooned to 52 seconds by the time Bottas peeled into the pits on lap 28.

Being able to stay in Gabriel Bortoleto's and then Carlos Sainz's slipstream - and thus Overtake Mode window - helped Perez for a while, but doesn't explain the huge gulf in performance.

"It's been one of my best weekends in Baku, I managed to get 150% out of that car," Perez said. "We were fighting cars that are a second or two seconds faster than us, due to the overtake mode so we stayed with them throughout the first stint." Meanwhile, Bottas said he would have to look for answers after only being able to fight Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso. One hopes he finds a couple.

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

Isack Hadjar celebrated his return from his injury layoff with what is likely his strongest performance for Red bull to date, and every bit as impressive as his maiden grand prix podium in Zandvoort last year.

Nursing a fractured left wrist, Hadjar qualified fourth and finished third and proved a match for team-mate Max Verstappen on the favoured soft tyres. So much so that the Frenchman was poised to try and attack his team-mate right before the first safety car came out.

Hadjar's enforced three-week absence following his boxing injury was most unwelcome for his continuing development, but the pugnacious 21-year-old showed he doesn't have a glass jaw.

Norris has every right to be upset with Colapinto, and he would be wise to take another social media sabbatical with his inbox likely flooded with abuse. But the truth is he should never have been in a position to be taken out by midfielders to begin with. Norris has had a particularly poor weekend by his high 2026 standards as McLaren's lack of low-speed performance and aero efficiency hit particularly hard in Baku.

• 

  Formula 1Lando Norris: FIA should hand out race ban for Franco Colapinto's Baku F1 crash

But despite all that, Oscar Piastri still qualified third and looked good value for a podium until he joined Norris in outbraking himself into Turn 1, the transgression that dumped Norris into the midfield before the safety car.

So, what was going on with Norris? Team principal Stella explained the Briton had been dealing with an intermittent fuel injection problem that cost Norris straightline performance both in qualifying and the race, while the team didn't nail its energy deployment puzzle. But Norris also held his hand up. "I had no chance out there with the speed I had, but I'm sure there were some things I wasn't doing well enough in driving," he said. "I need to see what I can improve for next time."

Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon enjoyed a positive Baku weekend. Franco Colapinto, not so much.

Photo by: Bryn Lennon / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Now there's a name that hasn't featured here very often this year, and Baku was a hard-earned opportunity to make amends.

It has been an open secret for a while that Ocon has had one foot out the door at Haas. Ahead of the Baku weekend, it emerged his other foot had joined suit as the Frenchman declared himself a "free agent". Among a pool of candidates, Ferrari junior Rafael Camara is understood to have dazzled the team during a recent test outing at Portimao.

What is it like trying to perform in F1 knowing you're on borrowed time and your team has found more desirable options for 2027? We will never know. But it can't have been easy for Ocon to deal with, trying to fight for your career aboard in an inconsistent car that only occasionally allows you to show your worth.

But In Baku, Ocon's VF-26 performed without any anomalies. And after he opportunistically snatched eighth away from team-mate Ollie Bearman, he defiantly fought his corner in the press, too.

"I can say I deserve that, not all the rest of the shit. I've raced with everyone out there and I've always been on par. I've won in every championship that I've raced in. I won Formula 3. I won GP3. I won in Formula 1. I can do it, you know? I'm one of the best out there, and I'm not afraid to say it."

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

Any hopes Aston Martin harboured after its sizeable Hungary upgrade now seem to have vanished. Honda's subsequent power unit upgrade may have improved some areas, but it is still miles away from the competition.

If anything, the car's reliability and driveability appears to have taken a step back rather forward, with Lance Stroll retiring from his fourth straight grand prix and Fernando Alonso continuously plagued by problems, too.

But the most striking deficit remains on the performance front, as Alonso and Stroll routinely shipped up to 30km/h on Baku's long straight compared to Mercedes.

Honda's plight has triggered further debate over whether it deserves more assistance from the regulations as the FIA's ADUO catch-up mechanism is set for fresh tweaks. But with Honda already afforded extra development headroom earlier this year, it must demonstrate a major step forward as early as 2027.

- The Motorsport.com Team