Few people would have had Max Verstappen, George Russell and Carlos Sainz on their bingo card for the podium positions in Azerbaijan.
The strong winds blowing off the Caspian Sea had threatened to unsettle all the F1 cars during the weekend. But it was the winds of fortune that blew in on qualifying and race day to utterly disrupt McLaren. The team, so sure-footed throughout this dominant season, needed only to outscore Ferrari by nine points to clinch the constructors’ championship, with a record seven races to go.
But F1 doesn’t really do fairy tale endings. A shaky performance from both drivers in qualifying and an uncharacteristic pair of errors from Oscar Piastri on the opening lap of the race blew a hole in their plans. Piastri handed team-mate Lando Norris a golden opportunity to take a big bite out of his lead in the drivers’ standings. Where the championship had looked out of Norris’ hands after his retirement from the Dutch GP, he suddenly had a chance to regain some leverage.
Piastri made three mistakes in 24 hours, if you add in his qualifying error, which landed him down in ninth place on the grid. A jump start and a sudden stop dropped him to last place into Turn 1 and then he ran offline into a wall a few corners later. Race over. The first time since this time two years ago that he had failed to finish in the points. Had Piastri, the calmest driver in the field, cracked under pressure?
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images
His team-mate Norris, in eighth place, was now staring at an open goal; every additional place he could gain would close him in on Piastri in the drivers’ standings with seven races to go. It didn’t start auspiciously; he was napping at the restart from the early safety car for Piastri’s accident and Charles Leclerc jumped him.
It got worse for Norris just after the half-way stage. Having given himself a shot at a podium by extending on medium tyres, his undercut attempt on Tsunoda went wrong when McLaren lost him a vital two seconds in his pitstop with a sticking wheel gun. He fell from fourth to seventh. Piastri heaved a sigh of relief.
At the front Verstappen built on the momentum that he and his Red Bull team had built with his win from pole in Monza. With Sainz his main adversary in the Williams and Racing Bull’s Liam Lawson as a tailgunner, Verstappen had a very simple road to his 67th grand prix victory.
Amazingly it is the first time since 2023 that the Dutchman has won two consecutive races. Is Verstappen playing himself back into contention for the drivers’ championship? He’s 69 points adrift of Piastri, with seven races to go. He couldn’t pull it back… could he?
New team principal Laurent Mekies appears to be really turning things around at Red Bull; a point further illustrated by Yuki Tsunoda finally getting a tune out of the car, battling the Mercedes and Ferraris in the top six.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
Sainz had given himself a shot at scoring Williams’ first podium for four years, with a strong qualifying performance and he built on it, holding second place for three quarters of the race. But he was blindsided by a superb performance from Russell and Mercedes, who jumped him in the pitstops. This boosted Mercedes ahead of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship. It was a huge credit for Russell to score a second-place finish having felt so ill earlier in the weekend.
The self-styled ‘smooth operator’ Sainz has had a bumpy ride this season, but brought it home in third place, tightening Williams’ grip on fifth in the constructors’ standings. “We are on the rise,” Sainz beamed as his theme tune, performed by Sade, played out on the Baku public address system.
So is Max, Carlos. So is Max.
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