Colapinto Crash Causes Chaos (2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Reaction)

Now, obviously, to lead off, we are going with George Russell.

He led wire to wire in his win.

He almost got pipped by Max Verstappen at the finish line, which would have been really great for somebody wearing a Red Bull t-shirt like me.

But this was George's day.

Saturday is George's day, as we remember.

And he not only puts together a great qualifying lap on Saturday... on Friday, because Friday was quality day because the race was on Saturday, of which today is still Saturday.

But he also did a great race and continues to go to show how good the Mercedes car is when it is in clear air.

Because obviously, when Max and Oscar were fighting for P2, George was just, you know, going off on his merry way and would have continued to go off on his merry way for the rest of the race had we not had everything that happened in the second half of the race which was so much more exciting than the first half I a friend of mine who chose not to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to watch the race she asked me if it was worth it to watch the race in 30 recap or watch the race and I basically told her watch the race from the race start And then once you get bored of a certain battle and you'll know exactly which battle it is, which of course was the max Oscar battle that did get, let's be real, did get boring.

Then skip ahead to lap 28, 29, and then things get exciting again, which I think is accurate.

So if you have not watched the race and you're listening to my reaction instead of watching my reaction instead, if you're on YouTube with me, that's how you should watch the race until you get bored.

And then after lap 29, it'll be exciting again.

But of course, George is still in contention for the Drivers' Championship.

He has closed the gap to Kimi Antonelli to 66 points, which is still a lot of points for Kimi, a good cushion for Kimi, especially in light of how things went for him this weekend.

We'll talk about Kimi in a second.

But George has a lot that he needs to do and a lot that he needs Kimi not to do in order for him to really have a hope of winning this Drivers' Championship.

But just like last year where it was a matter of here are the things that Oscar is not doing to win the championship, Kimmy would have to continue to do that in order for George to have more of a chance than, yes, he cut into Kimmy's lead today, but there are still many more races for Kimmy to do better than he did today.

And also I want to talk about like, I think it was really kind of insulting for the broadcast.

I was watching the sky feed of how they spent basically most of the race doing like picture in picture with Kimmy, who was like back in P15 and stuck in P15 for the first, what, 15 laps of the race before he started to get going and clear those slower cars in front of him.

And it's just like, how long until Kimmy gets up there to fight with George? And how's that gonna go? And you know, the the McLaren themed drama of drivers fighting each other and who gets the favorite preference, especially.

especially on a weekend where the big boss was not there.

Toto was not there, which I thought was really funny at the podium where someone was just holding a phone with Toto on it on FaceTime to celebrate the win with George.

I just, it was another meme worthy moment here in Formula One, but I thought it was a little insulting to George that they're so like, okay, so when's Kimi going to be fighting for this win, which is obviously what he did in Monza.

But of course, baku is is not manza and and fortunately baku and manza were both good races though thank goodness and then of course max almost pipped george at the end that was so close thank you to valtteri botas for i mean honestly it's really you never want to see drivers crash out of a race and especially at like opportune moments but you we have to admit for this race Alex Albon and Valtteri Bottas both of those crashes really did give us some of the most exciting moments of the race and George had no turbo power going to that last what quarter of that lap so Max was very close and Max was throwing basically everything he had at him and it really would have taken one mistake from George and this would have been a Max Verstappen win which would have been delightful but but I'll take a P2 and I will also take a double podium.