This is it, George. Your last distant shot at the world title. Perhaps the last of your life, certainly of this season. It comes tomorrow and on Saturday in steamy Baku, where Russell was shown an unexpected ray of hope in practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The race is unusually being held on a Saturday to clear the way for Sunday’s national Remembrance Day in honour of the servicemen who died in the Patriotic War that broke out that day, September 27, 2020, over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Tomorrow, therefore, brings qualifying and it is a chance for Russell to build on the unexpected success in the opening indications around the old city’s tight circuit, namely being quickest by six-tenths.
Now, Russell is 81 points behind his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli, the championship leader. Fourteen rounds are down. Eight or nine lie ahead depending on the conflict in the Middle East possibly impinging on the concluding races there.
Everything has gone Antonelli’s way this year, only his second in Formula One. The Italian has grabbed every one of them, as eight wins testify.
Russell has not caught a break, with just two victories, a crushing underachievement that caused him in Madrid, where he finished fifth a fortnight ago, to concede his chances of the title he began the season thinking was his for the taking were all but over. ‘Not impossible,’ he added.
George Russell was fastest in testing on Baku’s city circuit ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Russell needs to deliver in qualifying and the Grand Prix to boost his fading world title hopes
Well, here on Thursday, with the sun beating down on his back, Russell finished the day a place ahead of Antonelli. He also managed 25 laps more than the 20-year-old Italian who is in danger of wrecking an important stage of his career.
Antonelli pulled out of the first session with hydraulic failure, his running curtailed after just nine laps. His car went into dock and that delayed his arrival into second practice.
This is all playing into Russell’s hands for once and he looked happy as he went to work with engineers last night in a lightly populated paddock, Azerbaijan being a trek of a flight via some Timbuktu and the usual circus is consequently reduced in number.
It is, though, a decent circuit – and its tight streets caught out Arvid Lindblad of Racing Bulls when he pranged into the wall.
It also saw Lewis Hamilton called before the stewards charged with impeding Lindblad’s team-mate Liam Lawson.
Back on the subject of Russell, he remained defiant, insisting: ‘I’m going to keep fighting every single race until the title is mathematically beyond me.
‘It doesn’t change how I go about my job. I want to try to win every single race and put it on pole every single time. That’s my goal.
‘That’s what I’m working towards every single weekend, and what happens thereafter will be. There is obviously a huge deficit, so the performance is the biggest priority.’
Has the yawning gap to Antonelli relieved pressure on him? ‘No, because I wasn’t fixated by thinking about the championship before,’ he said. ‘I am where I am because the performance hasn’t been strong enough.’
Indeed – and, alas, from a British perspective. The equation, if this GCSE C-grade mathematician has got it right, is that Antonelli could miss the next three races, Russell win them all, and still be leading by six points.
What is not tested, however, is what sort of a front-runner Antonelli will prove. He has not shown signs of cracking, mind. But the last dash to the line has given heebie-jeebies to a succession of preceding presumptive champions.
That possibility can form part of Russell’s hopes of revitalisation beside the Caspian Sea. But he has to satisfy his side of the bargain, too, specifically to win the race, ideally from pole.
