Apparently Azerbaijan used up its quota of carnage on Friday and Saturday.
Valtteri Bottas took his second win of the season and the championship lead after an impressive performance at a surprisingly uneventful 2019 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
After an impressive start to the season with a dominant victory at Melbourne (albeit with Lewis Hamilton having suffered floor damage), the supposed rebirth of Bottas in 2019 as much more than just a ‘wingman’ had seemed to stutter. He was nowhere in Bahrain and, after taking pole in China, was beaten off the line by Hamilton and never really threatened for the remainder of the race. But the Finn was near enough flawless in Baku, grabbing what looked an unlikely pole position, holding his own in the first few corners and then not putting a foot wrong on his way to victory and the lead of the championship.
Hamilton will have regrets though. He had been the stronger Mercedes driver through the practice sessions and the earlier parts of qualifying. He produced an excellent first lap in Q3 but on the second runs, after Mercedes had successfully thrown Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel a dummy, they got their timings a bit wrong. Both drivers were at the back of a queue of drivers trying to get space for their runs. Hamilton was worst affected, losing a lot of tyre temperature which caused him to lose three tenths in the first sector and he couldn’t quite claw that back through the rest of the lap. He got the better start on Sunday but, as he put it, was “a little bit too kind”, giving his teammate a lot of space as they ran wheel-to-wheel. From there, despite following closely throughout, he never really got another chance.
You get the sense that the world champion still feels pretty comfortable that he has Bottas covered. Or maybe it’s just that he genuinely gets on with the Finn and is enjoying an honest fight after all the psychological warfare with Nico Rosberg. Either way, Bottas 2.0 still has a long way to go. He should have been leading the championship at this point last year too but for a dramatic puncture. The European season was where Hamilton started to pull away and he is infamously strong in the latter part of the year, as the tension builds. Maintaining the fight will be far from easy for Bottas but, if Ferrari continue to falter, hopefully he can do so for the sake of a competitive championship. Speaking of which…
Are Ferrari Actually Fast?
Another race and another missed opportunity for the Scuderia. At what point though do we actually start to question the speed of the car? In Bahrain, they were clearly quickest, certainly in the hands of Charles Leclerc. In China, Mercedes regained the upper hand. Through practice in Azerbaijan, they were miles ahead – over a second in Practice 3 – and it looked like we might have another season where certain tracks are more suited to each of the two leading teams and a title battle that would swing to and fro.
But it all unravelled after Leclerc’s crash in qualifying and here we are with a record-breaking fourth consecutive 1-2 finish from the start of the season for Mercedes. How much of that is down to the ongoing operational issues that have hindered Ferrari over the past few years and how much of it is just a lack of pace? Qualifying would appear to be down to the former but then Vettel didn’t really look like threatening the Mercedes at any point during the race. Or is it just those Mercedes sandbags out in force again? At least it meant they didn’t have to deal with team orders…
Barcelona will be key. People were referring to the race in Azerbaijan as a must-win for the red cars; Barcelona is far more of one in this writer’s opinion. Testing at Barcelona was what had fans, pundits and the media alike convinced that Ferrari were the team to beat this year. If they get comfortably beaten there too, that could be it. Last year, Mercedes had built a wild animal of a car but learnt how to tame it. This year, it seems they are the ones with the more consistent machine and Ferrari have built the wild animal…but have no ringmaster to do the taming.
What Happened to the Baku Mayhem?
Well, it all happened too early really. A Chuckle Brothers-esque start to the weekend saw a loose manhole cover thankfully not cause any harm to George Russell but cause a lot of damage to his car a few minutes in. Then the rescue truck that came to pick up the Williams promptly crashed into a bridge and proceeded to leak hydraulic fluid on the car. Talk about insult to injury. Practice 1 was cancelled as they checked the bridge and 300 manhole covers around the circuit.
Saturday was all about Turn 8. First Robert Kubica and then, more dramatically, Leclerc’s Ferrari ended up in the barriers there, each causing long delays whilst it was repaired. But sadly, in terms of a spectacle at least, Sunday passed mostly without incident. Except for Daniel Ricciardo bizarrely reversing into his former teammate, Daniil Kvyat, after the Australian had outbraked himself in an overtaking attempt and forced them both down an escape road.
Another Draining Weekend for Williams
Yes, that’s a drain pun. No, I’m not sorry.
If people thought things couldn’t get worse for the Williams team, they were proven thoroughly wrong by the weekend’s events in Baku. First there was the drain cover incident, destroying the floor of Russell’s car and damaging the chassis severely enough that it had to be replaced. Claire Williams put the damage in the hundreds of thousands and stated she would be “taking it up with race control”.
And then Kubica binned the sister car in Q1 on Saturday. Some feared Williams wouldn’t have the spare parts to rebuild another car after having to use the spare chassis for Russell, but fortunately they did and at least both cars were able to compete on Sunday. Not without one more kick in the teeth though. Kubica received a drive-through penalty for ‘pit lane irregularities’, with the team apparently confused as to what they had done wrong. It transpired that, with this being their first pit lane start since the race times shifted to 10 past the hour, Williams hadn’t clocked (no pun intended this time) that you’re supposed to bring the car to the exit 20 minutes before the race start time as opposed to 20 minutes before the hour…
It feels that Williams could, and should, be learning from McLaren. In coming to the realisation that their way of working was outdated and to then basically strip everything apart and rebuild from scratch. Zak Brown has done that for the more recent of the two British former champions and they are now pushing on and regaining dignity and competitiveness, with a solid double-points finish in Baku. But as things stand, it appears that Williams are too proud. And if they’re not careful, that could be their downfall.
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 60 Seconds
Answering the Burning Questions
Will there be more team orders at Ferrari? Leclerc’s crash removed that specific elephant from the room.
Can either Ferrari or Red Bull’s upgrades take them to the front? It looked like that could be the case for Ferrari on Friday but by Sunday normal service seems to have resumed.
Will Azerbaijan keep up its so far 100% record of producing highly dramatic races? No.
Will any of the midfield teams stake a claim for being best of the rest? Racing Point and McLaren had strong races but overall it’s still certainly in the balance.
