Unexpected or expected turn of events in Baku?
- pitwallstories
- Sep 16, 2024
- 5 min read
Change of scenery from the past European races that led to this moment in Baku, Azerbaijan. T-minus 8 races until the end of the season and we could’ve not been more excited about the outcomes of a race that didn’t disappoint in terms of entertainment and shocking results.
With McLaren only a few points behind RedBull for the fight for the Constructors’ Championship, the race in Baku was set to be either an incredible win for the papaya team or yet another way for RedBull to show their dominance even after a light setback following the last races.
Saturday
Qualifying day in Azerbaijan went pretty smoothly for the drivers but ended up with an interesting line up for the race on Sunday.
Despite the incidents and difficulties they had during free practices, Charles Leclerc set pole position and therefore achieved his fourth pole position in a row on the circuit. Teammate Carlos Sainz carefully followed his fellow Ferrari driver in third position.
Not abandoning their streak of shocking the crowd, McLaren had yet again one of the fastest cars on the grid when Oscar Piastri almost snatched the title of polesitter away from the monegasque driver. The other McLaren driver, Lando Norris, suffered a shocking result for a Saturday he surely won’t forget so easily. In fact, he had sort of a problem coming out of Q1 that eliminated him from the rest of the qualifying session, taking away the chance to get pole even though we know he had all the possibilities to do so.
Following the first three, Leclerc Piastri and Sainz, was Sergio Perez who somehow managed to wake up his car, contrary to the dutch lion Max Verstappen, who only managed to cross the finish line in sixth position.
The back sitters of the top ten drivers on Sunday were pretty shocking too. The Mercedes drove wonderfully throughout Q1 and Q2 even though something happened in Q3 they ended up in fifth position with George Russell and seventh with Lewis Hamilton.
But this was not the surprise we were talking about. Newcomer and absolute rookie Franco Colapinto managed to put his Williams into P9, Alex Albon following right behind in tenth and therefore completing the top 10 starting grid for the race.
Unexpected or expected Sunday?
After lights out Leclerc set a decent gap between him and the Aussie driver, flying away from the group. In the meantime, the RedBulls were in attack mode, trying to get past the Ferrari of Sainz and the Mercedes of Russell. Even in the back, things didn’t start so smoothly when Stroll caused a puncture on Tsunoda’s car and forced him to retire the car a few laps later, seeing that everyone was so easily getting past the japanese driver. Nonetheless, Norris immediately tried to rise from his unfortunate result on Saturday, going up to P12 in only a few turns since the start of the race. It was clear right about then that the McLaren driver wasn’t going to give up so easily on the race. In fact, by lap 8 he was already back in the point zone, having overtaken Oliver Bearman who had gone frighteningly close to the barriers.
During the laps that followed, Leclerc had a bit of a scare when Piastri got into that cricual 1 second gap that allowed him to use DRS, so the monegasque managed to change that gap into over 2 seconds, flying away from the rest of the group.
Overall there were many questions as to whether the drivers were going to go for a one-stop strategy or not and to answer this question, it was Colapinto’s stop who was the first driver to enter the pit-lane for fresh tyres.
Following the same strategy as the Argentinian driver, race leader Leclerc pitted on lap 17, mirrored by teammate Sainz who went in a tour later. Leclerc’s stop gave way to a series of fights for the first position as both McLarens were yet to pit, along with Perez's RedBull.
Eventually the course of the race was changed on lap 20 when Piastri managed to wonderfully overtake Leclerc from the inside, giving Perez a run for second position as well, seeing that he had weakened the Ferrari.
More than halfway into the race, Verstappen started to complain about breaking issues, setting a halo of anxiety over the grid because when a driver’s breaks are not working there is only one outcome. And it’s a bad one. Luckily for the dutchman the problem seemed to have been repaired soon after but in the meantime he had lost his position to Norris.
As the race was slowly coming to an end and Leclerc had already done everything to manage his tyres best he could, he thought it was time to try and overtake Piastri to get that first position back. He gave a fair battle to the aussie but eventually the latter came out victorious as the gap between the two became larger than 2 seconds.
Seeing the Ferrari struggling, Perez thought it was his time to get back into the fight but he was stopped by Sainz who, on the other hand, tried to keep him occupied to give Charles space and time to overtake Piastri.
Eventually this show of camaraderie from the Spaniard towards the monegasque did not end well. In fact, what happened was that at the exit of Turn 3, both cars’ paths converged, sending them violently into the wall. This caused the track to be littered with debris so Race Control thought it best to end the race under a Virtual Safety Car.
And so it ended with a crash, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Oscar Piastri achieved his second win in Formula One and therefore brought his team to the leading position in the Constructors’ Championship, overtaking RedBull something that hadn’t happened, not once, in two years.
“I tried at the start of the race to get in front but once I dropped out of DRS [range to Leclerc] I just didn’t have the pace,” said winner Piastri. “After the stop, I saw we were pretty close again and I felt like we had a little bit of extra grip. I had to go for it because I knew that if I didn’t get past at the start of the stint, I was never going to get past [...] I went for a pretty big lunge but managed to pull it off and then hang on for dear life for the next 35 laps. The last couple of laps, once [Leclerc] dropped out of DRS, were a little bit more relaxing, but there’s no such thing as a relaxing lap around here so it was hard work. It definitely goes down as one of the better races of my career.”
