Luke’s Weekend Review – Azerbaijan GP 2023

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King of the Streets: Sergio Perez Takes Baku Victory as Red Bull Duo Battle for Championship Lead

Azerbaijan GP Weekend Take 2

Another race down and we have a championship fight on our hand ladies and gentlemen, Both Red Bull drivers are 1-2 in the drivers championship and there is only 6 points between the pair with Max Verstappen leading the charge hoping on winning his 3rd title in a row.

We saw Sergio Perez solidify his nickname ‘King of the Streets’ by taking home both the Sprint and the Race on Sunday victories. Perez started in 2nd place on the Sprint on Saturday and 3rd behind his teammate Max Verstappen on the Race on Sunday. This however didn’t stop Perez from putting out a masterful class drive on both days and showing us why we all call him ‘King of the Streets’. Perez is now the only driver who has won Baku twice or as Perez neatly put it in his post-race interview “two and a half”.

Max Verstappen on the other hand had a bit of a rocky weekend and one where he will quickly want to put behind him and move on from, despite finishing 3rd and 2nd in the Sprint and the race respectively, Verstappen hit a few road bumps on the way. On Saturday in the sprint race, we see Max Verstappen and George Russell battle for 3 corners on the first lap which led to the pair colliding in turn 3 which gave Verstappen some damage on his sidepod which hindered his pace a bit but still manage to finish 3rd in the Sprint. After the sprint we see Max Verstappen go up to George Russell and having a go at him for the earlier incident in the Sprint, Russell brushed him off saying it was due to cold tyres and no grip before walking away. On race Max had a better start, taking the lead early on by lap 3 and was managing a good lead before he came in for his pitstop 1 lap too early as once he pitted, the safety car came out and gave everyone a cheap pitstop demoting Verstappen to 3rd place.

Despite this he didn’t waste too much time in 3rd place after the restart as he quickly cleared Charles Leclerc to take 2nd place from him where Max managed to stay the whole race due to the brilliant tyre and pace management by Perez. The 2 Red Bull drivers quickly settled in their pace after the SC restart and quickly pulled away from the man in 3rd Charles Leclerc. Max tried everything in his playbook to catch up to Perez, but it was all in vain. Perez had an answer to anything Max thrown at him and apart from a few hits on the wall from both, it was pretty much flawless the rest of the way.

Charles Leclerc managed to get pole on both the Saturday Sprint Race and the main race, however Ferraris pace in the race is still not good enough to take the challenge to the Red Bulls. That said. Leclerc managed to bag 2nd in the Sprint and 3rd in the Race getting Ferrari their first podium this season. As Leclerc said the race on Sunday was boring for him as he basically saw no one throughout the race apart from the last few laps where Fernando Alonso put on a charge to take 3rd place from him. Carlos Sainz on the other side of the Ferrari garage was not able to keep up with Leclerc’s pace to finish 5th in both the Sprint and the main race on Sunday.

Alonso's Strong Finish, Alpha Tauri's Woes, and Drama in the Pits: Recap of the Azerbaijan GP

Fernando Alonso despite not having the best start of the weekend where we saw him suffer with DRS issues all of Friday still managed to come in 4th on race day where he was very close into continuing his streak of finishing 3rd as he was only 6 tenths away from Leclerc by the end of the race, I’m sure Alonso will Shake it Off quick and will bounce back next time out in Miami. Alonso showed us a new side of him and that he has no Bad Blood with his teammate Lance Stroll where we heard Alonso telling his race engineer to give details about his brake balance to Lance Stroll to help him get higher in the grid.

Alpha Tauri will quickly try and put this weekend behind them as they had Yuki Tsunoda DNF on the Saturday and Nyck De Vries DNF on the Sunday where we saw him clip the apex of turn 5 with his front left tyre and breaking his suspension which brought out the Safety Car that took the lead from Verstappen on lap 10. De Vries wasn’t the only one to DNF on the Sunday where we saw Zhou Guanyu being called in the pits on lap 38 due to an issue on his car cutting his race short.

Lando Norris managed to keep up his record in Baku and was able to bag a couple points after a decent drive from the brit, in my opinion Lando had the best overtake of the race where he stuck it down the inside of Nico Hulkenberg on turn 7 after Hulkenberg had a shaky exit from turn 6.

The Mercedes seems to still be struggling with their W14 on race day as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell only managed 6th and 8th respectively. Hamilton was managing to keep up with the back of Carlos Sainz and through the back of the last stint of the race Lewis Hamilton gave it his all to try and overtake the Ferrari but didn’t have the pace to do so even with DRS. I wonder if they will manage to sort this car out before the end of the season and be fighting a bit more consistently for podiums and potentially wins.

It wouldn’t be a normal F1 weekend if there wasn’t a bit of drama, on the last lap we saw Esteban Ocon come into the pits for his mandatory tyre change after driving the full race distance on hards where we saw loads of media personnel in the middle of the pitlane and they all had to quickly get out of the way of Esteban Ocon. This was extremely poor from the FIA as to how they managed this as someone could have really got hurt in the process.

The Azerbaijan races went pretty much as expected in my opinion, who do you think was the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Azerbaijan GP? I will see you all next weekend where we will see F1 travel to the Miami GP.

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