Race 6 - Azerbaijan GP

This phrase has been overused this weekend but I cannot help it - Well done, Baku!

This might be the fastest I have updated after a race so far, but I needed to pen this down to make sense of what the hell I just watched! My head is still reeling, and I have no idea what my emotions are anymore.

This is why we love Formula 1 though, and the pure escapism it offers. I can talk about this race for the next two weeks, but I shall try and restrict myself.

Starting off, it very much seemed like the Monaco characteristics were fairly carried over. Redbull were fast, Mercedes were slow and Ferrari were topping charts like nobody expected. So many crashes, spins, understeer-y runoffs. Almost every practice session had a red flag. The experienced, the newbies and everyone in between were having nervous moments on the track, and it nicely built things up for the racing action to come.

Quali had its own share of drama with Red flags in Q1 right at the outset causing Antonio and Lance to start from the back of the grid without setting times. Q2 saw Daniel find the barrier, preventing a lot of people from getting out of Q2, including one very frustrated Sebastian Vettel. 

That radio message from Seb though was music to my ears. Compared to his last year's radio messages sounding all kinds of dejected and "that was the best I could do"s, this weekend saw him swearing up a storm on finishing P11 in Q2 and this was the Seb we all know and love.

More drama in Q3 of course, with Charles putting up a bomb of a lap to claim pole, and Yuki crashing causing everyone else to red flag and - crucially - Lewis Hamilton having a miraculous recovery ending up P2 and ahead of Championship leader Max in P3. Pierre had a monster quali as well, ending up in P4 and matching his previous best starting position. Carlos unfortunately got caught out by Yuki's crash and ended up only P5 which, given Ferrari's form in practice, was a disappointment.

And so we started the race on Sunday. Charles Leclerc was soon swallowed up by Lewis, and shortly after the two Redbulls. Ferrari curiously have better strategy during practice and quali than the races, and as a Ferrari fan who is a strategy management student, I cannot overstate how very frustrating that is to watch race after race.  

Some good action in the starting few laps, most of which was missed by the cameras. Sergio Perez had a good start, pushing up into P4 quite easily. Antonio Giovinazzi had perhaps the most impressive start of the season. I hope F1 features him at some point this season because this might be the best performance I have seen from him since he started in F1. Sebastian had a great start as well, quickly getting into the points and even leading the race at one point. Curiously, he had softs on at the start. I had fully expected him to get the hard tyres on and go long. The softs didn't prevent him from going long, however, and around lap 30 I was quite glad he hadn't gone for the hards from the beginning.

The reason being the tyre failure on Lance's car, that interrupted the lethargy that was starting to set into the race after a good span of clever undercuts by Redbull, Alpha Tauri and the like. Lance was a third or so down the main straight when his hard left rear just seemingly blew up on it's own. A safety car helped in bunching up the field, and resetting some of the battles going on up and down the field. Then, with 5 laps to go, race leader Max Verstappen, who had been driving a flawless race until then, had the exact same tyre failure as Lance had done about 15 laps before. 

From the reports coming out so far, Pirelli has claimed the reason to be debris on the track to be the reason for the failure, and it very well might be true, but it does give me an uneasy feeling to see two around 300kmph crashes at the same place affecting the same tyre compound. Thankfully both drivers turned up alright, although both heartbroken because they had been in brilliant positions when they crashed. Lance was running in P5 after having started plum last, and Max was leading the race and looking set to extend his lead on the championship.

Max's crash set up a red flag with 3 laps to go, triggering a standing start and a 3-lap shootout. And what a 3 laps it turned out to be! To start with, a rare and almost a rookie mistake from Sir Lewis Hamilton saw him drop from P3 to P16 at Turn 1. Fernando Alonso made up 4 places to finish P6 - his best finish so far this season. Sergio Perez almost had a critical failure and had to stop the car inches after the finish line - so close to doing a Lando Norris in Spa 2019. Lando himself had a great fight back to P5 and a tiff with Pierre and Charles for P3 in the last 2 laps. Gasly won that fight to end up in the final podium position. 

My driver of the day though, and about 40% of the F1 viewers agree with me, was Sebastian Vettel who finished P2. The joy on his face went a long way to soothe my Ferrari fan heart that was broken for Charles. The podium will come, Charles. You are very close - hang in there!

Other mentions - Yuki Tsunoda finished P7, his highest finish in F1 so far. Valtteri and Lewis both finished outside the points for Mercedes and that means that Redbull are now quite a bit ahead in the constructor's championship. (I hope Toto hasn't broken anymore desks over this.) Carlos had a lockup in the first half of the race because of cold tyres but thankfully ended up in the points, which means that Ferrari are now ahead of Mclaren in P3. Alpha Tauri has also switched places with Aston Martin in spite of Seb's podium and are now in P5 - would love to hear from Franz about that since this was his mission for the season.

In conclusion, a mad weekend with an equally crazy ending! And Sebastian Vettel is back - tell all your friends! 

And with that, this season has just blown wide open. Next up is a triple header as well which means back to back action for the better part of a month. First up though is Paul Ricard. Will it continue the trend of the last two weeks? Let's find out in two weeks' time. Till then - Au revoir!