Formula One was at a street circuit for the third consecutive race this season. This time they were in Baku at the fast Baku City Circuit for the FORMULA 1 AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX 2022. It was a nightmare race for Ferrari, with a double retirement that lost them critical points in the championship.
Charles Leclerc had a decent start from pole position. Max Verstappen had a lightning start from P3 on the starting grid, but simply had nowhere to go with it and was forced to slow down. Critically, Leclerc locked up around the outside of the first corner, giving Sergio Perez the opportunity to take the lead of the race on the inside.
Carlos Sainz was chasing down Max Verstappen in the opening laps of the race. However, it all came to end for the Spaniard on lap 9. His Ferrari suffered a hydraulic issue and he parked in the runoff zone of turn 4. This brought out the virtual safety car.
Leclerc was the only driver in the battle for the lead to make a cheap pit stop. The stop was slow, but it didn’t cost the team that much under the VSC.
After the race resumed, Verstappen began chasing down his teammate at the lead of the race. He was lapping faster than his teammate. Verstappen overtook Perez into the first corner of lap 15 for the lead of the race, although it was an organized swap by the team.
A couple of laps later, Perez pitted for hard compound tyres. It was a slow stop, as it looked like the team took a few extra seconds to drop the car from the jacks. He rejoined the race narrowly ahead of George Russell, but the Mercedes driver was never able to mount an attack.
Verstappen pitted for hard compound tyres two laps after his teammate, maintaining the lead of the race.
Ferrari’s Sunday went from bad to worse as as Leclerc’s engine erupted into smoke down the main straight on lap 20. He crawled into the pit lane, avoiding the deployment of the safety car.
Further behind, the two McLaren drivers were nose to tail. Lando Norris was in front of Daniel Ricciardo. Ricciardo, although he had many chances to overtake his teammate, was told by the team to stay behind. The team were hoping that Norris would have the ability to challenge Fernando Alonso later in the race. However, the strategy call was counter to Ricciardo’s strategy, since he was on the hards and Norris was on the mediums.
Fortunately for Ricciardo, Norris pitted for tyres on lap 21. But Ricciardo was still left under pressure from the AlphaTauri of Pierre Gasly.
The virtual safety car was deployed for the second time of the race on lap 34. This time it was remove the stopped car of Kevin Magnussen. The Haas driver parked his car on the back straight after a smokey engine failure that was reminiscent of the failure suffered by Leclerc.
The VSC was short, but it was enough to allow some drivers to take cheap pit stops. Red Bull and Mercedes called in both of their drivers and McLaren pitted Ricciardo for new tyres as well. Gasly was the only top 5 driver not to pit for tyres, which would lose the Frenchman a position to Lewis Hamilton later in the race.
On lap 38, Yuki Tsunoda was shown the “meatball” flag while running in P6. His DRS had been broken and now only half of the wing was opening. Many expected that to be the end his race, but the team pitted him and used tape to stick down the broken half of the wing. Tsunoda rejoined the race in P13 and was told to stop using the DRS.
Max Verstappen was another driver who was told to stop using the DRS with just 10 laps remaining in the race. It had little impact on his race, as he was already nearly 20 seconds in the lead of the race at that point with all of competition retired.
In the closing stages of the race, both McLaren drivers found themselves nose to tail again, but it was Ricciardo leading the way this time. Ricciardo was trying to chase down Fernando Alonso. Norris was faster and was not shy in telling the team this fact. Originally the team said they would have Ricciardo a few laps to try to overtake Alonso and then let Norris by to have a go.
As the laps wound down, the team were no longer confident that either driver would have the pace necessary to catch and overtake Alonso. Rather than swapping Norris, they told him to hold behind his teammate, returning the favour to the Australian. Norris complied.
At the end of the 51 laps, it was Max Verstappen who was at the lead of the race, earning his fifth race win of the season. Sergio Perez helped to give Red Bull their third 1-2 finish of the season, also picking up an extra point for the fastest lap. George Russell wrapped up the podium for the third time this season, ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Pierre Gasly.
There will be little time to relax, as the teams and drivers head off across the ocean to Canada for the first time since 2019. The race will be in a week’s time, on the weekend of June 19.
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| Race Results | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | M. Verstappen | 25 | |
| 2 | S. Perez | 19 | |
| 3 | G. Russell | 15 | |
| 4 | L. Hamilton | 12 | |
| 5 | P. Gasly | 10 | |
| 6 | S. Vettel | 8 | |
| 7 | F. Alonso | 6 | |
| 8 | D. Ricciardo | 4 | |
| 9 | L. Norris | 2 | |
| 10 | E. Ocon | 1 | |
| 11 | V. Bottas | ||
| 12 | A. Albon | ||
| 13 | Y. Tsunoda | ||
| 14 | M. Schumacher | ||
| 15 | N. Latifi | ||
| DNF | L. Stroll | ||
| DNF | K. Magnussen | ||
| DNF | G. Zhou | ||
| DNF | C. Leclerc | ||
| DNF | C. Sainz | ||
