Pole sitter George Russell is starting on mediums but the three cars behind him - Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri and Isack Hadjar - are on softs.

Kimi Antonelli, down in 16th, is on mediums.

It is sunny and around 25C, with the wind having dropped significantly since qualifying.

Right then, build up done and it is time to go racing with 51 laps of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix about to get under way.

Marc Priestley
Former F1 mechanic on Radio 5 Live in Baku

The biggest challenge for Kimi Antonelli today is staying out of trouble. He's in the middle of the pack and that's where most of the trouble happens.

Andrew Benson
BBC F1 correspondent

In mathematical terms, this will be a one-stop race. The three tyre compounds are all behaving very similarly, the soft is durable and is expected to run long in the race, so any combination of the tyres is possible. However, the medium may well be the preferred start tyre just because it offers the greatest flexibility on strategy.

Where it gets interesting is with safety cars, of which there is a 90% probability in Baku. That, in combination with the soft’s durability and the consequent optimum qualifying strategy being to do several laps on one set, explains why all the top teams have at least one new set of each of the the three compounds. In fact, all the top 10, apart from the McLaren drivers and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, have two new sets of softs, which is very unusual.

An early safety car will likely tempt many into switching to the hard and trying to go to the end. Overtaking is not expected to be that easy - except perhaps if you’re Kimi Antonelli in a rocket ship Mercedes making your way up from 16th on the grid. His progress, as well as Max Verstappen’s from eighth, should be worth watching.

A pit stop costs about 20 seconds under green flag conditions and nine under safety car.

Image source, Getty Images

The Baku circuit is 6.003km long and just 7.6 metres wide at its narrowest point. Set in the heart of Azerbaijan’s medieval city, the track features a total of 20 complex turns with the shortest pole run to the Turn One braking point, at 111 metres. It’s a unique track with a long 2.2km straight and a variety of tight hairpins and chicanes that will test the drivers’ technical abilities.

It is national anthem time and the singer is belting it out with impressive gusto.

More from Alex Albon, speaking to 5 Live's Harry Benjamin about what race day looks like for the drivers: "I'll head to track, I'll grab breakfast where we are now, the hospitality truck, and then go into meetings. The first meeting will be with my direct team. That's my race engineer, my performance engineer and likely our driver coach. We'll go through our version of what we want to achieve for the race, whether that's driving changes, we need to focus on this management at this part of the race.

We'll go into another meeting which is a strategy meeting, and then we'll go into another meeting which is the global meeting of the whole team, including the people back at Grove. It's normally about an hour and a half to two hours of meetings in the morning.

"Then grab lunch and then we'll have some form of a celebrity or commercial prospect or a commercial partner of ours. Then we go into our track parades, that kind of stuff."

William's Alex Albon spoke to Harry Benjamin about what he does to avoid getting stopped for interviews on the starting grid before lights out.

Image source, Getty Images

Charles Leclerc, who starts second, holds the current lap record with a 1:43.009 set for Ferrari in 2019, as well as the record for the most pole positions at the circuit with four.

Marc Priestley
Former F1 mechanic on 5 Live in Baku

With the temperatures the way they are, cooling is going to be a really key issue. Not just in the race but right now before the race starts so that when they do get going, everything's working they way it should.

Image source, Getty Images

Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez both have the most wins at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with two wins each since F1 first came to Baku in 2016.

In that first year, incidentally, the race was officially called the European Grand Prix.

More from Oscar Piastri to Sky Sports on race pace: "We looked pretty good on Thursday so hopefully we can keep that going but I think to be quick by yourself is one thing; to be able to overtake people is another, so we’ll see what we get.

"I’m expecting George to drive off into the distance and I think we’ll be looking at Kimi in our mirrors pretty quickly."

Oscar Piastri to Sky Sports: "I think yesterday was a good result in terms of where we are on the grid. I think the gap to George is a lot bigger than we hoped but it’s always a chaotic race around here, so let’s wait and see what we get."

Marc Priestley
Former F1 mechanic on 5 Live in Baku

Ferrari's battle is with McLaren, it's probably not with Mercedes.

Anything can happen in this grand prix, walls are close, lots of tight corners which means there is a high risk of safety cars and VSC and that can flip things on their head quickly.

If you look at the race pace from practice it was actually McLaren that were slightly ahead of the chasing pack, Mercedes were in front in a league of their own should they have a trouble-free race. The real intense battle is McLaren v Ferrari, that's one to keep a very, very close eye on.

1) Russell

2) Leclerc

3) Piastri

4) Hadjar

5) Norris

6) Hamilton

7) Gasly

8) Verstappen

9) Colapinto

10) Bearman

11) Lawson

12) Albon

13) Ocon

14) Sainz

15) Lindblad

16) Antonelli

17) Bortoleto

18) Hulkenberg

19) Bottas

20) Perez

21) Alonso

22) Stroll

The pit lane is open and the cars are heading out to the grid.

Carlos Sainz will start 14th on the grid today after being given a five-place grid penalty.

The Williams driver had qualified ninth but was found guilty of failing to slow for yellow flags in qualifying.

Sergio Perez, meanwhile, has been given a three-place grid penalty after being found to have impeded Oscar Piastri in qualifying.

He will still start 20th because Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll line up on the back row after being given grid penalties before this weekend got under way after Aston Martin decided to implement a number of new engine components.

Image source, Getty Images

I don't know about you but I've been knocked out of kilter with the F1 schedule this week all taking place a day earlier.

Today is race day, a day earlier than Formula One's traditional Sunday slot, and this is due to avoiding a clash with Azerbaijan's national Remembrance Day, taking place on Sunday, 27 September.

Marc Priestley
Former F1 mechanic on 5 Live in Baku

This track can be both brilliant but also on occasion a bit processional. I think the unexpected nature of this track, it's so unique, it's a very different challenge to almost every other track on the calendar, that presents its own quirks.

The fact that we've got some drivers out of position, notably Kimi Antonelli in 16th in a car that we can clearly see from Russell's pole lap that is capable of moving forward and it's a track we can overtake on. I think I'm expecting good things.