George Russell surprised his own team by overtaking Carlos Sainz Jnr through his pit stop.
Mercedes told Russell he would rejoin the circuit behind the Williams driver when he made his pit stop on lap 39.
He gained time partly thanks to his committed approach to the pit lane entrance. The Baku pit lane approach is one of the fastest on the calendar and Russell passed daringly close to the barriers on either side as he came in, gaining time.
He also picked up time thanks to a rapid service from his pit crew. He was stationary for just 2.3 seconds. Russell’s race engineer Marcus Dudley said he’d had a “very good pit stop”.
As a result, Russell enjoyed the fastest complete pit stop time of the entire race. He spent 19.809 seconds in the pit lane. Only one other driver – Nico Hulkenberg – had a time of less than 20 seconds.
Thanks to those gains Russell rejoined the track narrowly ahead of Sainz. That put him on course to beat the Williams driver to second place.
It was an especially impressive performance for the Mercedes driver as he had been unwell for much of the weekend and considered withdrawing on Friday. Team principal Toto Wolff congratulated him after the race, saying: “George, really well done. Well driven. Flu does good for you.”
“Yeah, not bad considering I felt like ass all weekend,” Russell replied.
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Russell’s radio messages from his pit stop
| Lap: 39/51 RUS: 1’48.001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dudley | And now we’ve got Tsunoda in the pit lane. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dudley | So George we’ll be box, box this lap. One second behind Sainz on exit. Preset diff entry, diff mid. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lap: 40/51 RUS: 2’00.578 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dudley | Russell rejoins ahead of Sainz Overtake available on exit. Watch the white lines. |
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| Russell | I thought you said they’d be a second behind? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dudley | Yeah, it was a very good pit stop. Gap 1.7 behind. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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