Russell's surprise podium 'added bonus' for Mercedes

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George Russell was celebrating an unexpected podium in Baku as third place fell into his lap on the penultimate lap of the race - along with a load of debris, in a dramatic climax to Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Russell had been disappointed to qualify in fifth place for the race on Saturday, and when the lights went out to start the race he dropped a place to Red Bull's Max Verstappen

Like the rest of the top eight he ran a short first stint on medium tyres as part of a one-stop strategy, which meant that after pitting on lap 13 he found himself behind Alex Albon and Lando Norris who had started on hard tyres.

That ended up working in his favour, with Verstappen now bottled up behind Norris which allowed Russell to catch and pass the Red Bull on lap 34. When Albon and Norris made their deferred stops, Russell was back in fifth.

He was too far back to catch the cars battling for the lead. But again that turned out to be to his good fortune, as Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez made contact while battling with Charles Leclerc over P2.

Read also: Stunning win for Piastri after late crash in Baku

With two cars in the wall, Russell found himself promoted to the podium alongside Leclerc and race winner Oscar Piastri, making it a trio of former F2 champions celebrating with champagne.

“That was pretty crazy. It's an added bonus to stand on the podium, "Russell said in parc ferme after the race ended under a Virtual Safety Car."Glad to be on the podium.

"It was a really strange race today," he said. “We had a really bad start to the race," he admitted. "I was dropping off a lot.

"It was very difficult on the medium tyre in my first stint. I was over one second off the ultimate pace and finding it hard to control the rear tyre surface temperatures.

:But on the hard tyre I think we were one of the quickest out there, On the Hard tyre in my second stint, the car felt brilliant.

"In the final 20 laps, I was lapping one second quicker than those at the very front. It is hard to work out exactly why this was and a little frustrating, [but] that was great. Got past Max!

"It was a long old race. There was so much hard work this weekend for everybody in the team,” he added. “There was engine changes on my side, engine changes for Lewis. So much going on. Everybody was working so hard.

As for the big accident between Perez and Sainz that ended the race, Russell had been first on the scene and was surprised that there wasn't a swifter response from race control.

“The sun was coming down. You couldn’t see anything," he said, recalling how he had found himself "“driving full gas into a wall of carbon fibre on the penultimate lap."

"We were having a relatively quiet run to P5 after I got past Verstappen but we'll take it. We were fortunate to get onto the podium and I am glad that both Carlos and Checo are okay.

“I was shocked the safety car or VSC obviously didn’t come out sooner," he said. "The car could have been anywhere. Glad to see everybody was okay."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.