Baku Weekend Recap: Power, Chaos and a Bad Weekend for Aston Martin
For Baku's Thursday-to-Saturday schedule, it's fair to say plenty of fans found the switch a little disorienting. Races are so closely tied to Sundays that having the grid line up and lights go out on a Saturday, with a sunday still to come rather than the usual Monday working day, took some getting used to. A small quirk of the calendar that nonetheless shaped how the weekend felt.
On track, George Russell was the constant through nearly all of it. He topped FP1 and FP2 on Friday, lost out to Verstappen by a tenth in Saturday morning's FP3, then delivered a Qualifying lap that put him 0.837 seconds clear of Leclerc for the biggest pole margin of the season. Baku's long straights reward raw straight-line speed above almost anything else, and it showed: Mercedes and Red Bull, arguably the two most powerful units on the grid, filled four of the top five grid slots and finished the race the same way, with Russell, Verstappen, Hadjar and Antonelli occupying four of the top five race positions too.
It was another miserable weekend for Aston Martin from start to finish. Alonso's car was pulled in on Friday over a suspected oil leak, and by qualifying both drivers already knew they'd be starting from the back after taking on new power unit elements, a 25-place penalty for Alonso and 20 for Stroll. Stroll then clipped the wall in FP3, and neither car made it to the finish on Saturday: Stroll was stopped with a water pressure issue the team said they were investigating, and Alonso retired in what the team itself called a dreadful weekend.
Elsewhere, the fight for third in the championship took a hit. Norris had a real chance to close in on, or even leapfrog, Hamilton in the standings this weekend, but his race ended early when he was caught up in the Turn 1 incident at the Safety Car restart alongside Gasly and Colapinto. With Hamilton bringing his Ferrari home in sixth, any ground Norris hoped to make up instead went the other way.
The race itself had all the ingredients Baku is known for: two Safety Car periods, multiple retirements, four grid penalties handed out before lights out, and a final-lap twist when Bottas crashed into the barriers and brought out yellow flags just as Verstappen was closing in on Russell. In the end it came down to a tenth of a second, with Russell taking a maiden Baku win and Antonelli's recovery from a 16th-place start to fifth keeping Mercedes' own title fight alive.