Russell takes pole in Baku as Antonelli hits wall

George Russell took an imperious pole position for Mercedes at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as his team-mate and championship leader Kimi Antonelli crashed out.

Russell beat Ferrari's Charles Leclerc by a massive 0.837 seconds while Antonelli, who leads the Britain by 81 points in the championship, will start in 16th.

The Italian hit the inside wall at Turn One in the first session and was knocked out.

McLaren's Oscar Piastri was third ahead of Red Bull's Isack Hadjar and McLaren's Lando Norris.

Lewis Hamilton, compromised by running without a tow from another car, was sixth, ahead of the Alpine of Pierre Gasly and Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

With a tow or slipstream worth as much as 0.5 seconds, Verstappen was following Norris on their final laps when the Briton made a mistake and went off track.

That scuppered Verstappen's chances of competing closer to the front.

But although the four-time champion said he believed he could have been on the front row, he acknolweged that he could not have beaten Russell.

On a weekend in which Antonelli's running has been compromised by reliability problems that meant he missed out on half the possible running on Thursday, Russell absolutely delivered on Mercedes' dominant position on this unique track.

Russell has looked comfortable all weekend and never looked in danger of being beaten for pole, his first since the Austrian Grand Prix at the end of June.

"That's probably the biggest margin I've had in my whole career," Russell said. "The lap felt really sweet and the car has been feeling great all weekend."

Leclerc was somewhat taken aback by Mercedes' superiority, saying that the position was what he expected but the gap most definitely was not.

At the bottom of the top 10, there was finally some good news for Williams, for whom Carlos Sainz achieved the team's first top 10 qualifying performance of the year.

Williams have introduced a new chassis this weekend which has brought them down to the weight limit for the first time this season, after being as much as 25kg over at the start of the year.

Along with some additional developments, it appears to have produced a big step forwards, although the caveat is that Baku is a track that suits the characteristics of the Williams car and does not expose its weaknesses.

Team-mate Alex Albon did not manage to secure a tow in the second part of qualifying, and was "anyway struggling with straight-line speed all session", and was 13th, just under 0.4secs behind the Spaniard.

Antonelli's error came on his second lap of the first session.

He turned into the first corner too early, and the left front wheel clouted the inside wall, breaking the suspension.

He initially tried to get the car back to the pits but was told by engineer Peter Bonnington to park up.

"Let me try," Antonelli pleaded, before Bonnington told him that either the track rod or upright was broken and there was no way Mercedes could fix that in the time they had to turn the car around before the next session.

Antonelli had been on the back foot all Friday trying to catch up time lost to a hydraulic problem that had stopped his car on track halfway through first practice, and was not repaired until halfway into the second.

It was Antonelli's first major mistake of the season since he crashed heavily in final practice at the first race of the season in Australia.

Saturday, 26 September at 12:00 BST

Live commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live with build-up from 11:00; live text updates on BBC Sport website and app

1. George Russell (Mercedes)

2. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)

3. Oscar Piastri (McLaren)

4. Isack Hadjar (Red Bull)

5. Lando Norris (McLaren)

6. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari)

8. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)

9. Carlos Sainz (Williams)

10. Franco Colapinto (Alpine)

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