Lewis Hamilton took his first race victory of the 2018 season, collecting the lead in the World Drivers’ Championship lead from Sebastian Vettel, who made a late mistake that cost him a podium position. The FORMULA 1 2018 AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX was full of twists and turns.
It was a chaotic first lap. The positions at the front of the grid remained unchanged. Heading into the second turn, Sergey Sirotkin didn’t brake quite enough, rear ending a Force India. Later down the straight, Nico Hülkenberg moved across the front of Sirotkin, forcing him into Fernando Alonso and giving the McLaren driver a double puncture on his right ride.
The following corner, Esteban Ocon collided with Kimi Räikkönen, ending his own race and causing front wing damage to the Ferrari. Ocon squeezed Räikkönen into the corner, leaving no where to go. The two Sauber drivers also lost of weight, colliding with each other and losing some debris. The safety car was brought out to remove the wounded Williams and Force India as well as the massive amount of debris that had accumulated on the track.
Renault had a strong showing after the safety car returned to the pit lane. Both Carlos Sainz and Nico Hülkenberg were able to sneak past the two Red Bull cars ahead. It was short lived for Hülkenberg, who lost the rear of the car a few laps after getting by the Red Bulls and damaged the rear suspension enough to retire from the race.
About 18 laps into the race, the first DRS detection point went offline, forcing the teams to manually tell their drivers when they are within the DRS zone of the car in front and were allowed to activate the DRS.
Just shy of halfway through the race, the cars started to lock up and run wide. Hamilton locked up hard into turn one, losing a lot of time to Sebastian Vettel, who had led every lap of the race thus far. The lack of grip forced Lewis Hamilton to pit for a set of soft compound tyres. Ferrari did not pit to cover off Mercedes.
The two Red Bull drivers didn’t care that their cars were wearing the same team colours, battling in first sector just after the halfway point of the race. Daniel Ricciardo got by teammate Max Verstappen down the main straight with the slipstream and DRS helping him out. However, he wasn’t able to get the position until his second attempt with an identical move a few laps later.
On lap 31, Vettel pitted for the soft compound tyres, but Mercedes left Valtteri Bottas out in the lead. The Red Bull drivers pitted a little less than 10 laps later, with Ricciardo getting the first choice of pitting. Verstappen followed a lap later. The team opted for an aggressive strategy, going for the ultrasoft tyres.
But there was drama for the Red Bull team with the teammates taking each other out in the first corner on lap 40. Ricciardo committed to the inside of his teammate, but Verstappen decided to block him in the braking zone. Ricciardo wasn’t able to slow the car down in time, rear ending his teammate, much to the displeasure of the team management on the pit wall.
The safety car was deployed for the incident, allowing Bottas to take a free pitstop and maintain his race lead. The safety car was extended when Romain Grosjean lost control of his car while putting heat into the tyres. The car ended up in the barrier, causing a lot of embarrassment for Grosjean and some extra work for the marshals.
On the restart, Bottas caught the other drivers napping, as he took off really early. This put Vettel under pressure from Hamilton. Heading into turn one, Vettel made a brave move but came in too hot and locked up the tyres. This forced him wide and destroyed his tyres.
But the Azerbaijan Grand Prix had one more major twist to give. With just a few laps remaining in the race, Bottas ran over some debris down the main straight, suffering a race-ending puncture and giving his teammate the race lead.
Hamilton was able to take the race victory thanks to the series of unfortunate events for the car around him, giving him the World Drivers’ Championship lead from Vettel. Meanwhile, Sergio Pérez found himself on the podium with Kimi Räikkönen.
Above results table does not include any post-race penalties
