Is the F1 title fight back on?

Let's start with Baku because George Russell won, which was needed, let's say, in this fight for the championship.

He has now closed the gap to Kimi Antonelli.

It's still a huge gap, Alex, though, isn't it? Is the championship still alive or are we all getting ahead of ourselves?

I mean, I think it's the latter.

I think George Russell is world champion material.

And I really think he's had an unexpectedly, shockingly bad year.

And I don't think it really reflects his level at all.

I think Kimi Antonelli, generational talent.

I think he's going to end up being one of the top drivers.

But I really don't think Russell's been sort of found out or the suggestion that everything he achieved, like by beating Lewis Hamilton in Lewis's team for so many years there.

I don't think that reflects who George is in terms of what's happened this year.

He's obviously just not gelled with this car as well as it looked like he had in preseason testing and that first race win in Australia.

But I think there were signs in Australia, particularly in the race, that kind of showed what was going wrong with Russell.

And that was, I think what he's really struggling with is the tyres.

But Antonelli was faster in that race.

I think if he doesn't crash in FP3, if he gets pole position, but then I know they were having big start problems at the start of the year.

I think Antonelli actually wins that race and Russell never gets any momentum at the start of the year because Kimi's just been at the same level from the off other than when it all went wrong for him in Q1 in Baku.

The thing with Baku, as good as Russell was, he was absolutely brilliant.

I think the closest finished in 24 years doesn't reflect how dominant his performance was because the safety car raised his gap.

But it was all down to the tyres.

For once, it wasn't that the tyres were overheating, it's that they couldn't get them hot enough.

And he did it perfectly.

And that was obviously something that he's shown before he's very good at.

let's go to Malaysia now, whereas they've already declared a heat hazard.

I just think we're going to end up back in where we were before Baku, which is that Russell seems to be at Antonelli's level, but he's not decisively quicker to the point where I can see him winning every race from now to the end of the season.