Race weekend review
In what now seems like it could be a three-way title fight between Verstappen, Leclerc and Perez; F1 returned to Baku, where Sergio Perez claimed his first victory with Red Bull in 2021 in a thrilling race.
Practice
Perez came into the weekend with momentum behind him from his win at Monaco and a new contract extension with Red Bull. The Mexican started off the weekend strong with P1 in FP1, ahead of Leclerc and Verstappen.
The two Spaniards, Sainz and Alonso completed the top 5. Issues for Latifi and Schumacher saw their sessions negatively affected.
FP2 saw Leclerc outdo Perez and Verstappen as he took P1 in the second session by over two tenths of a second. Alonso and Sainz were a bit further back, again completing the top 5.
Perez took P1 in the final practice session, showing the Ferrari’s and his teammate that he was a serious threat. The gap between himself and Leclerc was only 0.070s while Verstappen was a further two tenths behind.
Sainz placed fourth, with the McLaren drivers Norris and Ricciardo showing some decent pace in fifth and sixth position.
Mercedes had major struggles with purposing on their cars, causing additional discomfort for their drivers who were in P8 and P12.
Qualifying
The battle for pole looked tight between Perez and Leclerc who had been fighting to impress during the weekend, but one can never discount Verstappen from the equation.
Red flags are known to cause chaos around Baku and chaos was caused quite late into Q1, which left teams hurrying to get out for one final lap to save themselves from elimination. Stroll touched the barriers into Turn 7 but suffered minimal damage, continuing his aim to escape Q1. But a lap later, he collided into the barriers at Turn 2, which brought out the red flag.
The queue in the pitlane to go out one last time was long, with the McLaren drivers who were not safe down at the end while Mercedes were at the front. Everyone hurried to the finish line, elbows coming out in order to make sure they could start their final flying lap. Albon complained over the radio that Alonso impeded him by slowing down too much, ruining his lap. In the end, the stewards did not investigate the incident.
Out in Q1: Magnussen, Albon, Latifi, Stroll, Schumacher
In Q2, Vettel hit the barriers, causing a yellow flag for a short amount of time. The front runners had already put in their banker laps before the yellow flag, but certain drivers were soon put under pressure, the two McLaren drivers, for example.
Hamilton would be under investigation after qualifying, with Hamilton going slow and marred the lap of Lando Norris, who ended up backing out of his final flying lap, leaving him just short of Tsunoda who was in tenth. In the end Hamilton avoided a penalty.
Out in Q2: Norris, Ricciardo, Ocon, Zhou, Bottas
Sainz put in a great lap that put him on provisional pole after first runs in Q3. His teammate, Leclerc, was close behind, a fragment off his pace, followed by Perez and Verstappen in third and fourth.
Perez had a brief issue which saw him stay in the garage longer than others, meaning he had no tow on his final lap and neither did his other rivals who were battling for that top spot.
Sainz was pushing hard, too hard, which caused a mistake costing him time. Leclerc on the other hand, produced a stellar final lap and put himself in pole position. Perez then put himself into P2, an important front row start in the bag, ahead of Verstappen who would start third in the race.
Top 10: Leclerc, Perez, Verstappen, Sainz, Russell, Gasly, Hamilton, Tsunoda, Vettel, Alonso
Race Report
A brilliant start from Perez saw him overtake Leclerc at the start of the race, with Sainz putting pressure on Verstappen who quickly then opened up a gap to the Spaniard.
Sainz then suffered an issue with his car on Lap 9 and retired from the race.
The other Ferrari of Leclerc also retired when he suffered what seemed like an engine issue on Lap 20 before half race distance. He had been closing down the gap to the Red Bulls after his pit stop that left him in third.
Verstappen had closed the gap to Perez when he then overtook him for lead of the race with a nice move on his teammate on Lap 14. The Dutch world champion was in a league of his own, finishing 20 seconds ahead of Perez.
Perez seemed to lack the pace to keep up with Verstappen, dropping back after his teammate’s overtake. He added to his 18 points with an extra point for the fastest lap of the race.
George Russell proved to be Mr. Consistent with another podium, clinching third place, three in total this season. He took advantage of Ferrari’s misfortune and made a second pit stop like many others did to finish the race on fresher tyres, while others like Vettel, Gasly and Tsunoda chose to stay out on their older tyres that they had pitted for on Lap 9.
Lewis Hamilton suffered a considerable amount of porpoising during the race which left his back in a poor state at the end of the race, visibly in pain as he got out of his car. Despite this, the 7 time world champion put in an incredible shift and finished behind his teammate in fourth place, also earning driver of the day.
Pierre Gasly converted a great qualifying result into a great points finish for AlphaTauri, his first points since Melbourne with a fifth place finish. Tsunoda had been in a great position also, running ahead of Vettel in sixth, but an issue with his DRS saw him come into the pits where his team used duct tape to solve the problem meant that the young AlphaTauri driver finished 13th.
Sebastian Vettel earned decent points for Aston Martin finishing in P6, proving his skills had never faded. A mistake while he was in the hunt to overtake Ocon earlier in the race saw him make a smooth turn on the escape road to re-join the track meaning the German lost out to Hamilton and Tsunoda that he had overtaken during the round of pitstops. Without this earlier incident, the end result may have been different. Lance Stroll retired from the race when an issue was found with his car on Lap 48.
Alonso, who had much older tyres than the McLarens behind him was able to fend off his former team’s drivers for P7.
There was tension in the McLaren camp with both drivers audibly unhappy with holding station to their teammates on separate occasions during the race. But Daniel Ricciardo turned his luck around finishing ahead of his teammate in P8, the help of the second VSC allowing him to make good use of his hard to medium tyre strategy. Lando Norris completed the double points finish for the papaya team who had been waiting for this for a while, getting himself a P9, with Ocon also doing the same with his P10.
Valterri Bottas gained some places from his 15th place start, taking his Alfa Romeo to 11th place. But, Guanyu Zhou, who had been performing well and placing above his teammate, retired on Lap 24 with an issue on his car; another DNF to his record.
Alex Albon had a quiet race and finished in 12th place with his Williams. Nicholas Latifi had a 10 second stop-go penalty for a starting grid infringement at the beginning of the race and he finished last.
Mick Schumacher placed 14th as the only Haas to finished the race. Kevin Magnussen retired on Lap 33, showing that some serious discussions about reliability needed to be held.
We head to Canada for Round 9 of the 2022 season. With a firm grip on the championship lead, is there anyone that can stop Verstappen?
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