'Shocked' George Russell makes bold claim after 'perfect' lap in Baku qualifying

George Russell estimated his pole position in Baku was the most comfortable of his entire career after crushing the opposition during qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with the "perfect" lap.

Russell, who claimed he was "shocked" by the manner of his performance, made light work of Ferraris, McLarens and Red Bulls in Baku, after Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli knocked himself out of the grid-setting session when he hit the wall in Q1.

The Briton was over eight tenths of a second faster than Charles Leclerc in second, a country mile by modern F1 standards.

It was the 12th pole position of his F1 career, and the largest pole margin since Max Verstappen at the Canadian Grand Prix in 2023, which was 1.2 seconds clear of second place.

In fact, Russell's second-quickest lap would also have been enough for pole position at the Baku City Circuit; such was the dominance of his — and Mercedes' — performance. 

"It's been a while, so it definitely feels good," Russell said after getting out of his W17. "It's probably the biggest margin in my whole career, and even including F2, F3 days, so the lap felt really sweet.

"The car's been feeling great this weekend, and on a track like this, when you can hook it up like that, it feels really amazing."

Having topped FP1 and FP2 and narrowly been pipped in FP3 by Verstappen, it was put to him that pole was never really in doubt.

"I was feeling good, to be honest," he replied. "I think Max has been very fast this weekend. I don't know what happened to him at the end; maybe with the yellow flag of Lando, he didn't get that last chance. So it would have been interesting to see.

"But it was just the perfect lap at the end. I was in a good gap behind to Hadjar, which gave me a nice little slipstream, probably by another tenth or two down this back straight, so it was great."