Red Bull take double podium at Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Red Bull took a double podium at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen finishing second and Isack Hadjar finishing third.

The result saw Red Bull collect their first double podium since the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix, although the team were close to a first win of the 2026 season as Verstappen finished just over a tenth behind race-winner George Russell.

After grabbing the big haul of points at the race in Baku, Verstappen now has 163 points after picking up his seventh podium of the season. The Dutchman now has more podiums in 2026 than any driver who does not drive for Mercedes, although he still remains 6th in the standings on 163 points.

Meanwhile, Hadjar marked his return after missing three races through injury by grabbing his second podium of the campaign. The Frenchman remains 8th in the standings and is now up to 86 points for the campaign.

The Milton Keynes-based Red Bull Racing team are up to 263 points for the 2026 campaign, with the team 43 points behind 3rd place McLaren.

A rare Saturday full-distance F1 race saw Hadjar start fourth and Verstappen eighth, with the Dutchman having had a compromised qualifying due to a power unit issue and having to pass through yellow flags after Lando Norris had spun on his final lap.

Verstappen quickly set about trying to right that, however, and he would quickly dispatch of Pierre Gasly and Lewis Hamilton to move up to 6th, directly behind Hadjar after the Frenchman had been passed by Norris.

The duo would quickly work in tandem, however, with Hadjar leading Verstappen as the pair passed Norris and Charles Leclerc to be up to third and fourth.

The two Red Bull drivers would then swap at the start of lap 7, with Verstappen seeking to challenge Oscar Piastri after the McLaren made a fast start to get past Leclerc into second.

For much of the first part of the race, however, Verstappen would remain stuck behind Piastri, having worn out his tyres too much to challenge the McLaren. Red Bull preferred not to swap the Dutchman with Hadjar as the race went on despite Hadjar asking for a swap as Verstappen’s mediums struggled to get the pace he was hoping for.

Before the team could figure out next steps, however, lap 31 saw a big development when the safety car was deployed after Alex Albon’s Williams overshot turn 5 and crashed out.

This saw Verstappen and Hadjar both box, with the two on flipped tyres as Verstappen was given the faster soft tyres, and he would use those to swift effect to overtake Piastri when the race restarted after the safety car period ended on lap 35.

That would be a quick resumption, however, as the safety car was near-immediately deployed again. Behind the two Red Bulls, Franco Colapinto crashed into his teammate Pierre Gasly and Norris, taking all 3 out of the race and needing another safety car.

Racing would restart on lap 38 and Verstappen would remain second when the race got back underway. Hadjar remained fourth and continued to try to press Piastri, which would soon pay off after Piastri made a mistake and overshot turn one, falling all the way to the back of the field.

Out front, Verstappen remained in close proximity to Russell but despite getting into overtake mode, he was unable to make a move to swipe the lead off the pole-sitting Mercedes.

With time running out, however, a yellow flag was put out after Valtteri Bottas crashed his Cadillac just as Russell and Verstappen began their last lap. An engine issue on the Mercedes that came from navigating the yellow flag zone saw Verstappen get much closer to Russell, but he would ultimately run out of time as Russell held on to take the win by barely over a tenth of a second in the closest F1 finish between the top two of a race in 24 years.

Red Bull’s quest for a first win of the season will continue next week when the F1 field heads to Malaysia for a race the Sepang circuit near Kuala Lumpur will be holding on behalf of Bahrain as the Middle East nation’s circuit remains unavailable.