BAKU, Azerbaijan — Mercedes’ George Russell produced a superb performance in qualifying on Friday to take pole position for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, while his teammate and world championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, crashed and will start down in 16th.

Russell dominated Thursday’s two practice sessions and, in spite of running second to Max Verstappen in Friday’s third practice, defied the strong wind to finish top of the leaderboard in each section of qualifying with a best time of one minute 42.526 seconds.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished 0.837 sec behind and will line up alongside Russell on the front row on Saturday in Baku.

“It’s been a while, it definitely feels good,” said Russell.

“Probably the biggest margin of my career. The lap felt really sweet, car’s been feeling really great this weekend.

“On a track like this where you can hug it, it feels amazing. I was feeling good. Perfect lap at the end.”

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar fill the second row of the grid ahead of a British pair of world champions — Lando Norris, in the second McLaren, was fifth fastest with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton in sixth.

Pierre Gasly (Alpine), four-time champion Max Verstappen (Red Bull), Carlos Sainz (Williams) and Franco Colapinto (Alpine) rounded out the top 10.

Antonelli’s costly mistake

The biggest talking point other than Russell’s outstanding performance was the sight of his 20-year-old teammate Antonelli clipping the wall on Turn 1 in Q1 and picking up a puncture.

The 20-year-old Italian, who missed most of Friday’s practice sessions after suffering a hydraulics failure, wanted to continue but race engineer Pete Bonnington overruled him, telling him it was a “fairly big job” and to come into the pits.

It was his first mistake since crashing in final practice in Australia, and the first time this season that Antonelli, who is romping away at the top of the championship with an 81-point lead over Russell, failed to reach Q3.

“The grip was coming up very quickly, lap by lap,” said Antonelli.

“Obviously, I turned in and then suddenly I had a lot more front end than the lap before and I touched the wall.

“It’s a mistake from my side. Very unnecessary and I’m mad about it and we’ll try to do better tomorrow.

“The car has been very strong all this weekend and George has been doing incredibly well, but we’ll try our best to recover as many places as possible.”

Antonelli ended up qualifying 16th on the grid with many drivers forecasting that he will finish second behind Russell in the race.

He vowed to overcome his poor grid position as he did at his home Italian Grand Prix where he won from 19th on the grid after taking power-unit penalties.

“Kimi is starting well down again,” said Russell. “But he has shown that he can be at the back and end up on the top step a few times so… we’ll see what we have to do.”

Russell’s pole position, the 12th of his career and fifth this year, boosts his faint hopes of reducing Antonelli’s 81-point lead in the title race.

The grand prix is being run on Saturday, rather than the usual Sunday, because 27 September is a national day of remembrance in Azerbaijan.