What about Kimi Antonelli's start? Well he's actually lost a place, he's down to 17th.

Lights out!

Strong start by George Russell as he holds onto the lead into the first corner but a fine start by Oscar Piastri as he immediately moves up a place into second.

Everyone is lined up in position on the grid. Seconds away...

Marc Priestley
Former F1 mechanic on Radio 5 Live in Baku

There's a huge number of unknowns with this race and I think that's what I'm most excited about. Even talking to the teams, they don't know!

Those starting on mediums will be able to get to around 29 laps on them, while those on softs will likely need to make their first and potentially only stop at lap 19.

Away goes the field for the formation lap.

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."