F1 - Azerbaijan GP

The chaotic Baku City Circuit hosted Round 17 of this year's championship. Did it deliver up the usual chaos, and what effect did it have on an increasingly tight championship battle? Let's find out...

Performances

Red Bull - another dominant performance from Max, it's giving 2023 vibes again. Great pole lap and lead every lap to get his 6th grand slam (joint with Lewis now!). The car has seemed really quick since a new floor upgrade was introduced a few races back and even Yuki managed to have his first positive performance of the season with a decent P6 finish. Say it quietly but can Max pull back the points? Probably not but it would be fun to see him in the mix as it gets closer.

McLaren - Piastri dropped a major major stinker. One of the biggest stinkers I can remember a title contender having. (Massa Silverstone 08 or Webber Korea 10 maybe?). He crashed in qualifying and only started P9, jumped the start and went into anti-stall and then crashed again on the opening lap. The only consolation will be that Lando didn't capitalize on it as much as he should have, getting stuck behind Tsunoda. 6 points is 6 points at the end of the day but if that pit stop wasn't slow potentially a P4 or even a podium could have been on... once again Oscar gets lucky.

Mercedes - finally a better weekend from them. Russell had a really great drive with an illness to finish P2, and Kimi managed to outqualify him but just missed out on a podium in P4. This was just the result they needed, and now they're above Ferrari in P2 of the constructors'. Good race weekend overall for the team.

Ferrari - another pretty disappointing weekend. Lewis was out in Q2 and had better race pace but only enough for P8. Charles crashed in qualifying and only came home P9. It just felt like there was no pace overall and as stated before the team has slipped to P3 in the constructors', and with Red Bull's recent upturn in form... they need to watch out. (Also there's 7 races left Lewis please just one podium for me please!!!!!). Also it just sums up this team that they couldn't even do a simple position switch on the last lap...

Williams - Carlos Sainz!!! Finally there was no bad luck this weekend! He had a great lap in qualifying to get on the front row and had very good race pace, only losing out to Russell but still getting a podium for Williams! A big result for both him and the team after a tricky first half of the year. The first podium for Williams since Belgium 2021 as well (really it's Baku 2017 because Belgium 2021 wasn't a real race). Fantastic result. Albon crashed in qualifying and got involved in an incident with Colapinto so didn't score any points.

Racing Bulls - another great team result! Lawson had a great qualifying in 3rd, and while he couldn't hold onto the podium, 5th is still his best career result and some very good points for the team. Hadjar came home in P10 to score another point. All these double-points finishes are great for the team, and really solidifying their P6 in the WCC. They're having a good season.

Aston Martin - no pace again, it felt especially bad this weekend. Probably the second-slowest team, just ahead of Alpine. Keep on holding out for 2026 Fernando!

Sauber and Haas - interesting strategy at the beginning from Ocon but it just didn't work out. Bortoleto and Bearman were decent but just missed out on points

Alpine - once again the two slowest cars on track. Hopefully the new Mercedes engines next year helps Gasly out because otherwise it's not looking good.

Race rating - 5.5/10 - this gets .5 over Monza because of qualifying. Too many cars were stuck behind each other again and there wasn't much overtaking. And honestly Pirelli annoyed me again. No more one stop races please!!! I've been rewatching the 2011 season recently and most races are 3 or even 4 stops and it's great! Please bring it back.

Driver of the race - Verstappen, Lawson, Russell and Antonelli all had good races. But it has to be Carlos Sainz delivering a very Smooth Operation for the Williams team to score a brilliant podium!

News

I saw recently that the 2026 Sprint Calendar was released and there's been a lot of talk about the future of F1... first of all having a sprint race in Singapore of all places might be the stupidest decision I've ever seen in F1. The whole point of Singapore as a track is that it's the closest F1 has to an endurance race - with the tough conditions and lengthy race length! Literally the opposite of what a sprint is meant to be! Apart from that it's cool to see Silverstone back as a sprint race but no Brazil or COTA is kind of bad, I really liked those tracks for the sprint format.

Now there's been a lot of talk about having up to 12 (!) sprint weekends, having some kind of reverse qualifying, getting rid of free practices and even having shorter races! First of all there is no way that races can be made shorter. Really. I absolutely hate that idea. 12 sprint weekends is a bit excessive, maybe an increase to 8 would be acceptable, but over half the races in the sprint format will take the shine off of it in my opinion. Too many of them won't make the format feel different. And they need to choose better tracks! (Singapore of all places!). Lastly reverse grids is a nice idea but just won't work in F1. The whole point of reverse grids in junior series like F2 is to teach young drivers how to overtake and race in a pack. This just wouldn't really work in F1, especially with the closeness of the field. And smart drivers would probably go slowly on purpose to get a good grid position!

Next weekend - the stunning Marina Bay Street Circuit in the heart of Singapore. The first ever F1 race held at night, the circuit is a test of endurance for the drivers, having one of the longest average race times on the calendar, and blistering heat that saps energy quickly. A safety car has been out in every race here except 2024. Some of the best races here include: 2010 (an incident filled race with Alonso winning by 0.2 seconds), 2017 (that crazy first corner incident) and 2023 (Sainz wins the only non-Red Bull win of the year and that ending with the Russell crash was amazing.)