The ingredients were there to make the Azerbaijan grand prix a cracker. And they all mixed together to produce as thrilling and unpredictable a race as any Hollywood director could dream up.
There wasn’t a long wait for the inevitable safety-car as Esteban Ocon collided with the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen after leaving the Finn no room into turn two. It meant that Raikkonen needed to stop for a new front-wing and the soft compound tyre, which dropped him to plumb last.
For most of the race pole starter Sebastian Vettel seemed to have it under control as he managed the pace ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes. But the mid-race lull quickly gave way to a melee of crashes and safety cars. Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen who dramatically took each other out at the end of the start/finish strait induced the second appearance of the safety-car.
The two Red Bull drivers had been swopping paint and banging wheels throughout the race as the battled for supremacy. Ultimately the FIA race stewards adjudged that Verstappen had moved twice ahead of Ricciardo that prompted the crash. Both drivers were given a reprimand and Red Bull management have chalked it up to “two guys taking things into their own hands” and that blame would not be appropriated either way, at least that’s what team principal Christian Horner said in public.
It certainly hasn’t been the first time that Verstappen has made two moves under braking as Vettel, Raikkonen and others have criticized him for it in the past. His errors in judgment are beginning to pile up and well into his third season in the sport the excuse of ‘inexperience’ cannot be used any longer. While his aggressive approach to racing has been lauded and welcomed Verstappen runs the risk of developing a reputation that wont be easy to overcome.
The second safety-car was good news for Valtteri Bottas, who, because he hadn’t stopped yet, was in the lead of the race. His twelve-second window over Vettel was enough to get him in and out of the pitlane ahead of the Ferrari driver. The re-start prompted Vettel to attempt a dive up the inside of Bottas for the lead of the race but the Ferrari driver only succeeded in significantly flat-spotting his tyres. He dropped behind the Force India of Sergio Perez to finish fourth.
The joy was short lived for Bottas though as he was agonizingly forced out of the race with a right rear puncture. As the dust settled Lewis Hamilton emerged to win the 63rd race of his career ahead of Kimi Raikkonen who was at one point plumb last. Sergio Perez kept his nose clean enough to earn the final step on the podium. By his own admission Hamilton considered ‘lady-luck’ the determining factor in his race win. Nevertheless, luck is part of the sport and Hamilton kept it together when everything was going off around him.
Renault’s Carlos Sainz secured a brilliant fifth place finish by the driver of the day was undoubtedly Sauber’s Charles Le Clerc with a stunning sixth place. Fernando Alonso recovered from a double-puncture to finish seventh ahead of Lance Stroll who scored Williams’ first points on the season in eighth. Stoffel Vandoorne took ninth for McLaren as Brendon Hartley scored the first point of his F1 career in tenth.
Hamilton’s victory takes him four-points clear at the top of the driver’s standings while Ferrari retake the lead in the constructor’s standings ahead of F1’s return to Europe for the Spanish grand prix in two weeks time.
