ROUND 17: 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX 2024
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Baku City Circuit
- First Grand Prix: 2016
- Number of laps: 51
- Circuit Length: 6.003 km
- Race Distance: 306.049 km
- Lap record: 1:43.009 Charles Leclerc (2019)
- 2023 winner: Sergio Perez
Track Map
Man piastri has got ice flowing through his veins. Calm throughout the race under immense pressure and even after winning such a great race. Unbelievable temperament.
Yes I thought to myself half way through the race that is the new ice man.
He had like 25 laps with Leclerc behind him AND with DRS. Every lap I was look at that interval timer and it was close to 0.6s which meant an overtake opportunity or it was almost 1.0s which would have broken the tow.
Then LECs tyres fell HARD. The crash at the end was crazy (haven’t seen Perez’s replay but it seemed like his fault), however I feel like the last two laps would have been bonkers and I think Leclerc would have finished 4th.
Indeed, I think I was more worked up than he was just watching the race from my couch hahahaha
What a bonkers race. So much close racing throughout. Still in awe about the crash.
Piastri was fantastic. Norris from 15th on start to 4th was excellent salvaging by McLaren.
10 mega points for Williams! Points for Colapinto.
Bearman squeezes another point in.
Russell getting a random podium yet again.
What a race, I was glued to the screen from the start to the VSC period. Oscar’s overtake and defense were brilliant, Leclerc’s defense against Perez before the crash was unbelievable too. What a race and racecraft.
Great season isn’t it? Next year should be one for the ages. 2012 vibes
EDIT: year
This season seems like parts of 2009 and 2012 put together. The championship leaders have fallen hard like 2009 while 4 teams are fighting for wins like 2012. Great stuff
Oscar about Carlos & Checo: “They haven’t been great friends this weekend” 😂
Never change, Oscar, never change.
Oscar is that quiet friend that drops the sickest burns every now and then.
What a weekend for Williams and most specially for Colapinto! Here’s to hoping he will take this chance and make his 9-race-only chance the start of a brilliant F1 career. He seems to have what it takes
The slow mos of piastri and leclerc grazing walls and sliding out of turns is so sick. They were pushing each other to the absolute limit.
That synchronised drift out the last corner was amazing! Their reaction to that clip in the cooldown room was so funny.
That race had a lot going on. Unfortunate to see Perez put in such a good drive just for that to happen.
Indeed, I felt sorry for him. He had earned some good points.
Having said that and even though the Stewards rules nobody was at fault, I believe he had the better chance to avoid this crash
I was really fed up for him, it’s not often he gets to be faster than Max pretty much all weekend, and he really needed a good weekend. He even stayed back out of trouble till the moment came to pounce with Charles and then it goes wrong.
Unpopular opinion here but Ricciardo has to go… almost literally ANYONE coming into F1 has shown to be better that him, even in much lesser cars.
It is time to open the seats for new talent!
Using that logic, can we also get rid of Stroll?
Yes. Stroll is a bad driver and only has a seat because Daddy bought him an F1 team for his birthday.
Russell suddenly finding himself on the podium is quite a plot twist
He has either the worst luck or all the luck, rarely in-between
What was that ending man
Am I correct in thinking this is the first time McLaren has led the Constructor’s Championship since 2008?
Edit: Nevermind, McLaren were leading the Constructor’s at the beginning of 2014.
I think they mentioned on the broadcast that it was the 1st time since 2014 they’ve led.
This season is coming down to the wire and I love it. Bravo to Williams!
Russell confirms that the sun was in the eye in on the straight after turn 2. Could be why both perez and sainz did not realise that they were drifting towards each other
Unsure how their views are (usually terrible when they give us the inside helmet camera) but throughout the race I could barely see the colours of the cars from the ultra bright glare.
It seems they were going from sun in your face to tunnel dark. These people are super human to drive like that
Hulkenberg is oddly mysterious in post-race interview right now on how he ended up behind Hamilton and Bearman, only saying “something happened in the last two laps and I don’t want to talk about it”
Maybe he went off?
Ah, they have the on-board on the “Drivers Reaction” video on YouTube. Basically Hulk made the mistake of intuitively thinking that there was yellow already when passing the crash, but it was green still and so Hamilton and Bearman both overtook him.
Oh man, that’s shitty.
I missed this, I’ll have to check it out.
Hamilton went through and hulk was following him. I am assuming Bearman put some kind of schoolboy move on hulk to prevent the overtake? We will see
Ok, just before starting lap 49 from P10 Nico radios that he has a puncture and thinks he hit the wall, the pitwall replies pretty quickly the pressures look ok. Right before he passes the pit entry he asks what to do and the pitwall quickly confirms the tire pressures are ok.
Out of turn 1 they again confirm good tire pressures and tell him after turn 2 mode push, which he says he is already in, and is almost immediately passed by Franco. They then radio about his Pit In button being on and he tells them he’s tried to turn it off but it’s not working, they tell him to press it again. About mid lap they radio that the car is all ok, 2 laps to go at the line.
The next radio comms are about the yellow/double yellow and he’s instructed to stay right. He does but hits a huge pile of debris and reports it. The next sign board shows green flags.
He continues on and says it’s going to be red flagged at almost the exact moment he’s overtaken by Lewis and Oliver. A few turns later he again reports he hit something big, the team says they are checking the front wing, and the VSC comes out.
He immediately starts beating the steering wheel and radios something I can’t make out back to the team. It’s something like “man how have they not like?.. No way…” And the team interrupts him with "Yeah, swell. "
From there the comms seemed to all be instructions from the team on where he needed to drive and updates about how long is left in the race. Until- about halfway through the final lap Nico maybe talks, but there is no audio from him through the F1TV replay, just the team saying “yeah copy that Nico” and then telling him to stay close to the delta time. The only team radio from then until the checkered flag is delta and gap updates from the team, nothing from Nico.
The cool down and in lap don’t seem to show anything, and the final audio is the team and Nico apologizing to each other and Nico commenting the irony being it was his best race there, etc.
I plan on watching the onboard shortly to see for myself but I’m assuming there will be talk about it if something happened.