{"id":781028,"date":"2026-09-24T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/781028\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T12:00:09","slug":"azerbaijan-grand-prix-george-russell-fastest-as-kimi-antonelli-stops-on-track-with-hydraulic-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/781028\/","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan Grand Prix: George Russell fastest as Kimi Antonelli stops on track with hydraulic leak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mercedes driver George Russell headed Red Bull&#8217;s Max Verstappen in first practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Championship leader Kimi Antonelli was fifth fastest, but did not get a lap on the fastest soft-compound tyres after stopping on track with a hydraulic leak.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Russell, who trails Antonelli by 81 points, was 0.4 seconds quicker than Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ferrari&#8217;s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were third and fourth, both just over 0.4secs off Russell&#8217;s pace and right behind Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But neither Italian car ran the soft tyre as the teams completed varied programmes to start off the weekend in Baku.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Antonelli, who ended up 0.878secs off Russell&#8217;s fastest time, was the fastest driver in the early running using the hard tyres.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Italian stopped at Turn One on his first lap on the soft tyres, with smoke seeping out of the cooling vents on his engine cover.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He missed half the session so will have some catching up to do in the second session later in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes driver George Russell headed Red Bull&#8217;s Max Verstappen in first practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Championship&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-781028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}