Pole: Charles Leclerc
Winner: Sergio Perez
Fastest Lap: George Russell 1:43.370
1-10
Leclerc has a good start as he remains in the lead into the second lap of the race. Russell is up two places at the start as is Lance Stroll in the Aston Martin. Verstappen is closing the gap to Leclerc whilst using DRS to gain an advantage. In lap 4 Verstappen takes the lead using DRS on the main straight to breeze past the Ferrari. In lap 6, Perez has got past Leclerc on the straight with DRS and is now on track to challenge his teammate for the race win. Aston Martin is playing the team game as Alonso is losing pace behind Hamilton so they are going to wait for Hamilton to wear out his tyres. Gasly and Bottas both pit on Lap 7 for the hard tyre as Albon follows suit in the Williams. Tsunoda, Piastri and Sargeant all pit for the hard tyres as Mercedes are pitting Hamilton for new tyres, which frees up Stroll and Alonso. Hamilton and Norris both pit. Lap 10, Nyck De Vries has a stopped car at turn 6 and Verstappen pits as the safety car comes out.
10-20
The top 4 drivers Perez, Leclerc, Sainz and Alonso will have a free pit stop over Verstappen who is now running p7 behind Russell. Lap 12 Nyck De Vries car remains out on track as all cars are onto the hard compound tyre. Lap 13 safety car goes back into the pits as Perez backs the field up, Verstappen overtakes Leclerc and Alonso makes a tight move on Carlos Sainz on the inside as they almost touch tyres. Lap 15 Stroll gets the place back on Russell as Hamilton passes his teammate on the inside of turn 1 to take him up to p7. The stewards are investigating an unsafe release for Perez as the stewards make the quick call that no investigation is necessary. Stroll has clipped the same wall De Vries had, but the car seems okay. Lap 19 stroll messes up turn 16 suffering with oversteer and Hamilton capitalises on that and takes p6 into turn 1.
20-30
In lap 23, Perez remains ahead of Verstappen followed by Leclerc and Alonso as the rest of the field seem to be managing their tyres and thinking about the strategy for the rest of the scar. Ocon and Hulkenberg running 9th and 10th are having a close battle as Norris and Tsunoda are struggling behind. Lap 24 Gasly has stopped again on the hard tyres. Lap 29 Perez has built a 2-second gap to Verstappen as Verstappen has been reporting some issues with the braking of his car.
30-40
Gasly goes down the inside of turn 1 on the struggling of Alfa Romeo of Bottas to take p18. Lap 35 Verstappen and Perez clipped the wall at turn 15 as Ferrari reports that they are happy with the tyre life. Bottas pits on lap 36 and is on to the medium tyres. Lap 37 Hamilton has been closing in on Sainz as he has DRS open and closes the gap even further on the battle for 5th. Lap 37 and Zhou has retired with an issue as the other Alfa Romeo remains out on the track running last with the medium tyres. Lap 41 Hamilton is still closing the gap to Sainz as the race has settled and not much has been going out on track. Some movement in the pit lane as some teams are potentially thinking about another pit stop. Hulkenberg who is running p10 and still being chased by Norris clips the barrier in turn 15 as has many other drivers across the weekend. Leclerc has set the new fastest lap with a significant increase in pace as he is over 15 seconds behind the Red Bulls. In lap 46 Norris takes the inside of turn 7 and gets into the points as he pulls away we see a replay of Hulkenberg going deep before that overtake. This has now allowed Tsunoda to close the gap to Hulkenberg. Tsunoda has now overtaken Hulkenberg as the HAAS team is hoping for a red flag or safety car to change his tyres as we see Piastri overtaking on the main straight. In lap 50 Russell is going to pit for the soft tyres to go for the fastest lap. Esteban Ocon comes into the pit but as he does there are red bull mechanics, photographers and Marshalls getting park ferme ready as he comes into the pits and could’ve almost hit someone. Despite that chaos, Perez wins the Azerbaijan GP followed by Verstappen and Leclerc.
Summary:
The new sprint race format took place at the Baku Circuit in Azerbaijan. Whilst there was critical on-track action for each day of the weekend, many felt that the new sprint format had taken away from the excitement and anticipation of Sunday's race. Sergio Perez took the race win in the sprint and Grand Prix on Sunday igniting the battle for the championship which before Baku seemed to be in favour of Verstappen, now Perez is just 6 points behind we could be seeing a battle between two teammates for the title.
Perez benefited from a safety car brought out by Nyck De Vries after he stopped on lap 10, remained in control of the race from that point onwards managing to keep the lead and bring it home for a Red Bull 1-2. Leclerc finished p3 for Ferrari and his teammate Sainz finished 5th fending off the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton who also made decent gains during the race. Alonso and Stroll brought home a good haul of points with Alonso in 4th and Stroll in 7th keeping them second in the constructor's battle and some good teamwork was shown by both drivers at some points during the race. We saw multiple drivers clipping the barriers, particularly at turn 16 with the drivers getting off lucky to have not picked up substantial damage. It was a decent race for Mercedes who were able to convert their race into a good haul of points finishing p6 and p8 and Russell with the fastest lap. To finish the top 10, Norris finished p9 for the McLaren team who have struggled in recent races and the Alpha Tauri of Yuki Tsunoda finished p10 in a crucial season for the Japanese driver.
Rookie Oscar Piastri crossed the line p11 after showing positive steps forward with the new upgrades McLaren has brought in for this race weekend and the team is hoping to see further improvements of the upgrades in Miami. Albon came home to finish p12 for Williams followed by the HAAS of Magnussen and the two Alpine's who seemed to have a dismal weekend throughout all 3 days. Rookie Logan Sargeant finished p16 with Hulkenberg and Bottas completing the running order one lap down. There were 2 retirements, De Vries's car stopped out on track and Zhou had to retire due to an issue with his Alfa Romeo.
Next race: Miami
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