George Russell has vowed to keep fighting for the world championship until it is “mathematically impossible” after his fading hopes of a maiden crown were dealt an encouraging boost in Azerbaijan.
Russell has fallen 81 points behind Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli with nine scheduled rounds remaining.
However, Russell will head into Friday’s qualifying at the street venue on the front foot after he completed a practice double in Baku, while Antonelli’s running was derailed by mechanical gremlins.
Antonelli was forced to sit out more than half of the one-hour opening session after he broke down in his Mercedes with a loss of hydraulic pressure.
The failure also sidelined Antonelli for 30 minutes of the day’s concluding running, with his Mercedes mechanics scrambling to repair his car.
Antonelli completed just 25 laps across the two sessions – significantly, 23 fewer than Russell – and he finished the afternoon 0.552 seconds behind.
Russell conceded his chances of stopping Antonelli from winning the world title were “exceptionally unlikely” after seeing his team-mate romp to his eighth win of the season at the previous round in Madrid.
The Briton endured a disappointing weekend in the Spanish capital, finishing fifth, half-a-minute behind his younger team-mate.
Russell began this season as the title favourite, but he has carved out only two wins since – at the opener in Australia and then again in Austria in June – and his deficit to Antonelli in the standings is the equivalent of more than three victories.
So, the British driver will hope to use his speed on Thursday as a springboard heading into the business end of the 15th round and start chipping away at Antonelli’s lead which leaves him, with the bookmakers at least, as a rank 40/1 championship outsider. Antonelli is 1/16.
“I’m going to keep fighting at every single race until it’s mathematically impossible,” said Russell.
“I want to try and win every single race and put it on pole at every single race. That’s my goal and that’s what I’m working towards every single weekend.
“There’s obviously a huge deficit (in the championship), but it’s not even really a consideration right now. I’m in this position because the performance hasn’t been strong enough. The pressure has come from trying to improve the performance rather than thinking: ‘I need to fight for the championship’, because you can only fight for a championship if you’ve got the performance.”
At one stage, Lewis Hamilton harboured expectations of fighting for a record eighth crown, but an underwhelming run of results since he claimed his first Ferrari win in Barcelona in June means he is 101 points back.
Here, he finished fifth in practice, 1.3 sec adrift of Russell, and he was also summoned to the stewards after appearing to block Liam Lawson – a move the New Zealander described as “so f****** dangerous”.
Defending world champion Lando Norris should have won in Madrid before an ill-timed Virtual Safety Car cruelly denied him his third victory in four appearances.
Norris, 106 points behind Antonelli, expected the long straights and slow corners in Baku would not play to his McLaren’s strengths, and so it proved in practice. He was 1.5 sec off the pace in sixth.
The second practice session was red-flagged after British rookie Arvid Lindblad lost control of his Racing Bull through the uphill Castle section underneath the historic 12th century Baku Fortress wall.
The area of asphalt from one side of the track to the other measures just 7.6 metres – the narrowest section of any on the calendar – and Lindblad’s error of brushing the opening turn of the chicane proved costly as he crashed out.
“I literally clipped it by a millimetre,” said Lindblad over the radio as his session came to a staggering halt.
This week’s race is unusually taking place on Saturday to avoid a clash with Sunday’s annual national Remembrance Day.
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