THE RACE REPORT IS IN.
Just when it was looking like the quietest Azerbaijan race yet, Lance Stroll got smacked into the wall. Today’s race posed many more questions than it answered in terms of both the driver’s and constructor’s championships. As always Baku lived up to its reputation and reminded us why we should have really felt the loss of it last year.
Let’s run through the winners from today’s race.
Finally, there’s a smile on the face of Sebastien Vettel, who claimed a well deserved second place. It was a fantastic drive and provided Aston Martin with their first official podium. After a positive Monaco GP, is the champ really back?
Today seems to have broken the the second driver curse as for the first time since Daniel Ricciardo won the Monaco GP in 2018, a Red Bull driver that isn’t Max Verstappen. Perez had arguably the best pace of anyone on track and throughly deserved the reward of first place. Importantly, this has placed him in third place in the championship.
Pierre Gasly collected another podium after an incredibly strong weekend. He qualified fantastically in P4 and was in the fight for the entire race, expertly placing his car ready to snap up any positions gained from the chaos ahead. He valiantly fought off Charles Leclerc over the last two laps to secure third and its worth mentioning that his teammate Yuki Tsunoda had a great race too, finishing in P7.
Fernando Alonso was able to put his car up into sixth after a strong restart. These points will be crucial to Alpine as they fight in the mid-pack and also lost out due to an engine failure bring an end to Esteban Ocon’s race.
And now for the losers, and there were many.
Mercedes. Baku was most likely their worst performance of the hybrid era. No points whatsoever. Bottas no where to be seen after being left out to dry in qualifying, giving everyone else a tow. He was unable to overtake at all and was really damaged by the set up of the car. Toto Wolf was quick to state that the car was to blame for today, however, how much of this is now down to driver talent? The seat is looking very dangerous.
If things could not get any worse for Mercedes a rare mistake by Hamilton left him outside of the points, ending a 54 points winning streak. Hamilton was visibly gutted, this could have huge implication on his campaign for the record breaking eight word title.
Whether you are a fan of Max or not, you had to feel for him as a tyre blow out caused him to slalom into the wall in the same fashion as Stroll. This will really have hurt his confidence as we head to Paul Riccard in two weeks time. Mercedes are expected to be stronger there and so Max would have really wanted to make the most of their advantage on street circuits.
Lance Stroll looked on track to once again take advantage of an alternative strategy, starting at the back. It would have been great to see how that situation would have played out. It must really sting to see his teammate take second place and he arguably should have been in a better position to capitalise.
It was another satisfying visit to the windy and winding streets of Baku, but the main topic in the paddock has to be about Pirelli. It shocking to see Lance crash out, but we can’t have been the only ones not convinced by their statement during the race that they thought all other tyres should last. It is becoming a regular occurrence that at least one race per year sees tyre blowouts. However, normally there are external issues such as high degradation that increases the likelihood of such events. Today, was all on Pirelli. Even if it did shake the race up!
