Race Report: Podium Finish and Solid Points After Battling Drives in Baku

That was George’s seventh trip to the podium of the season and the team’s eighth.

The team opted to start each car on a different compound, with Kimi lining up P4 on the Medium tyre with George behind on the Hard in P5.

Kimi held on to P4 in the early stages with George dropping down to P6. He fought back twice though on Yuki Tsunoda, on the opening circuit and then lap 10, to reclaim P5.

Kimi stopped for the Hard tyre on lap 18 and, despite rejoining behind the VCARB of Liam Lawson, passed him shortly after to take what would ultimately be a net P4.

George meanwhile extended on an impressive opening stint before stopping on lap 39 for the Medium compound, rejoining ahead of his team-mate and the Williams of Carlos Sainz in P2.

Whilst George had a calm run to the flag, Kimi pushed hard to put pressure on Sainz in the battle for the podium but ultimately couldn’t quite get close enough to attempt a pass.

Sainz thus secured his, and our former colleague James Vowles’, first podium for Williams in P3.

With P2 and P4, the team moves back into second in the Constructors’ Championship ahead of Ferrari and Red Bull with seven races remaining.

Kimi Antonelli

Today was a much better Grand Prix than I’ve had in recent races. That said, I am still slightly disappointed that I wasn’t able to get myself on the podium. We were closing in on Carlos (Sainz) in the final few laps, but I just couldn’t quite find the pace to get within DRS range and then attempt an overtake. He did a great job so congratulations to both him and Williams.

Whilst I was hoping for more, today was still a decent result and with George in second, a good day for us as a team. We gained a lot of points on Ferrari which is a positive and moved back into second in the Constructors’ Championship. The pace across the field is tight but hopefully we can carry the momentum from here in Baku into Singapore in two weeks’ time.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We’ve had a solid weekend throughout here in Azerbaijan and that continued into today. We executed the race well on both sides of the garage to get ourselves back on the podium and bring home good points in P4 too. We'd not run the medium or hard tyres in free practice, so it was good to see that the car was well balanced on both compounds. We elected to split the start tyre strategies with the lack of long run data and so many cars out of position. George used this to good effect in his first stint to build a gap that, with a perfectly executed pit stop by our mechanics, gave him P2 on track. It was an impressive performance, particularly given that he has not been feeling 100 per cent this weekend.

For Kimi, it was a solid weekend from start-to-finish. He looked after his Medium tyres early on and was then able to jump Lawson for P4 with a pass on track. He closed on Sainz in the closing stages, but the pace of the Williams and the difficult following meant he had to settle for a spot just off the podium. Nevertheless, he has shown what he is capable of after some tough weekends recently and we are sure he will build on this in the closing stages of the season.