It’s only been on the F1 calendar since 2016 but the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has quickly become known for delivering the most chaotic and breathtaking races, bar none.
The 2021 race around the streets of Baku was already set fair when Charles Leclerc emerged out of the chaos of Saturday qualifying to secure an unexpected pole position. Lewis Hamilton too, on the back foot for most of the weekend, engineered his way to a second-placed starting position. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen, once again denied a shot at a final Q3 lap because of a red flag, was third quickest. Alongside Verstappen on the second row was a lightning-quick Pierre Gasly, who put his Alpha Tauri fourth fastest.
In the opening laps of the race, Leclerc led briefly before falling victim to first Hamilton then Verstappen and Sergio Perez. By the first round of stops, Verstappen had built a healthy lead while Perez was holding off Hamilton, who sat within DRS range for nearly all of the race.
Hamilton blinked first and swopped his soft compound for the white-walled hard tyre. He lost a smidgen of time in the pit box, but Verstappen and Perez’s pace was such that he would fall behind the Red Bull pair anyway.
The race seemed to settle for a period after the stops were completed. Try as he might, Hamilton simply didn’t have enough to overtake Perez and the Mexican driver would definitely not be pressured into a mistake either.
Elsewhere, Lance Stroll and Aston Martin have played a blinder on strategy with the Canadian running a solid seventh with a long opening stint on the hard tyre. But a dramatic failure on the left-rear tyre pitched the Aston Martin into the barriers on the start/finish strait at more than 300km/h. While Stroll was unharmed, he was clearly shaken by the violent and sudden failure.
The race resumed and so did Hamilton’s pressure on Perez but the Mexican had it well covered. With Verstappen in the lead, Red Bull looked on for a one-two finish.
But five laps from the end disaster struck for Verstappen as he, too, suffered a rear tyre failure on the start/finish strait. Because of the debris littered over the track the race was red-flagged. Verstappen’s retirement would seemingly have massive ramifications for the championship, as Hamilton looked poised to retake the lead.
In the pit lane just before the restart, Hamilton reminded his team that, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint. So get to be measured on how aggressive we go”. Hamilton aced the restart and was for all intents and purposes heading into the lead of the race. But he locked his front brake and went straight on at turn 1. The Mercedes driver rejoined last. A post-race radio communication revealed that Hamilton had left on the “magic”. It turns out that the “magic” refers to a button, which Merc uses to heat the brakes during the safety-car/warm-up lap period. It was this button that Hamilton forgot to disengage and thus his brakes were overheated. It was a rare mistake from Hamilton, as in Imola. Only this time it cost him any chance of capitalising on Verstappen’s misfortune.
To describe Valtteri Bottas’s race as woeful would be doing him a kindness. The Finn started 10th and made zero progress. At no stage did it get any better as he fell victim to a number of drivers, including being overtaken into the tightest section of the track by Alfa’s Kimi Raikkonen. Eventually, Bottas finished an embarrassing 12th ahead of only the Haas drivers.
As “Checo” Perez held on for an extremely popular first win with Red Bull it was revealed after the race that he too nearly didn’t reach the chequered flag thanks to an increasingly severe hydraulic issue. For the second race in a row, Seb Vettel was crowned driver-of-the-day and this time he was able to celebrate the accolade on the podium with a sublime second-place finish. Gasly and Leclerc had an almighty battle for the final step of the podium, from which the Alpha Tauri driver emerged victorious.
Leclerc finished a fine fourth ahead of Lando Norris in fifth. In sixth place was Fernando Alonso in the Alpine while Yuki Tsunoda delivered a much-improved performance in seventh. Carlos Sainz was eighth for Ferrari ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in ninth and Raikkonen in tenth.
The lack of points scored for either of the two championship protagonists is certainly big news in F1. But the drama of the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the breathtaking manner in which it constructed the final podium of Perez, Vettel and Gasly can hardly leave anyone dissatisfied.
