56 2GM Monday June 13 2022 | the times
SportAzerbaijan Grand Prix
5
How Red Bull drivers took control
Verstappen and Perez have climbed above the Ferraris of Leclerc and Sainz1st race 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th150100500Leclerc
SainzRussell
HamiltonVerstappenPérezptsMax Verstappen’s title win last year was
shrouded in controversy, but all the
indications are that the 24-year-old
Dutchman is on course for a rather
more emphatic triumph this time
round. His victory in the Azerbaijan
Grand Prix was his fifth Formula One
win this season and he now leads the
drivers’ championship by 21 points.
Verstappen had struggled with
balance issues on his car in qualifying in
Baku and started in third place on the
grid. But from the moment Sergio
Pérez, his Red Bull team-mate, surged
past the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, who
had been on pole, in the run to the first
corner, another Verstappen victory
looked on the cards. And so it proved,
with Verstappen going past Pérez on
the 15th lap after Leclerc had made an
early pitstop, then taking the lead when
the Ferrari driver’s engine failed. Ver-
stappen then put in a commanding
drive all the way to the finish with Pérez
coming second, almost 21 seconds back.
The Mercedes of George Russell and
Lewis Hamilton came in third and
fourth. Collectively, it was the best result
of the season for the team, but their
success was relative, boosted by Ferra-
ri’s calamities. It also came at a price in
terms of the physical battering the pair
suffered. The Ferrari woes began on the
ninth lap when a hydraulic failure
prompted Carlos Sainz to grind to a halt
at turn four. Eleven laps later the Italian
team’s interest in the race evaporated
when Leclerc’s engine gave out in a puff
of smoke, as it had in Barcelona.
Ferrari’s performances in qualifying
and early-season races have shown
they have pace and the ability to win,
‘I nearly went
into the wall’
continued from back
Verstappen starts to dictate terms
XPB IMAGES/ALAMYbut they are being killed by reliability
issues. “Reliability is a key element of
the overall performance,” Mattia
Binotto, the Ferrari team principal, said
afterwards. “To finish first you first
have to finish.” To make matters worse,
Zhou Guanyu, of Alfa Romeo, and
Hass’s Kevin Magnussen, both of
whom were driving Ferrari-powered
cars, also suffered failures that meant
they could not finish the race.
Verstappen’s victory was his 25th race
win in F1, an achievement that brought
him level with Jim Clark and Niki
Lauda. Graciously, he pointed out that
there are many more races now than
when they were competing, but it is still
a significant milestone.
Although Ferrari’s disasters favoured
him, Verstappen felt he would have won
regardless. “It would have been a very
interesting fight to the end with
Charles,” he said. “I think we did have a
bit of a pace advantage, but we never
got to have a fight. Overall it was a
good day, a strong day, with good
pace on the car.
“We had our misfortunes at
the beginning of the year. We
had to play a bit of catch-up but
now it has more or less evened
out. You have to score points
every weekend to really
fight for the champion-
ship. Everyone knows
that, but it’s not always
that easy.”
With its tight
turns around the
old part of the
city and its blis-
teringly quick
start/finish straight,
Baku has traditionally
served up drama, but this
year’s edition, retirements
aside, was far more straight-
forward. Only one result waslikely after Sainz and Leclerc dropped
out, and it certainly banished a few
demons for Verstappen, who was forced
out by a tyre failure when leading last
year’s race.
Having surrendered the lead to Pérez
at the very start, Leclerc found himself
under heavy pressure from Verstappen
over the first couple of laps. If anything,
the battle gave Pérez a bit of breathing
space, but the race was yellow-flagged
when Sainz came to a halt and a num-
ber of drivers, including Leclerc, took
the opportunity to dive into the pits.
Verstappen, who stayed out, passed
Pérez a few laps later to hit the front for
the first time. On lap 19 he pulled in to
put on a set of hard tyres and rejoined
the race in second, behind Leclerc. But
one lap later Leclerc’s engine failed and
Verstappen took the lead, which he held
until the end of the race.
The Ferrari retirements allowed
Russell to move into podium territory
and when Hamilton surged past Pierre
Gasly on the 44th lap the finishing
order, of two Red Bulls followed by two
Mercedes, was set.
Pérez, last year’s winner in Baku,
picked up the bonus point for fastest lap
late in the race. There was a sus-
picion that he had hurt his
chances of the win by going
too hard too early and treat-
ing his tyres too harshly, but
the Mexican denied that.
“It was right up to the vir-
tual safety car [after the Sainz
incident] where we lost
the pace,” he said. “I
think all the way to
that stage things
were looking right.
“We probably lost
a bit of temperature
on those tyres at
that time, with
some wear, so we
have to under-
stand that and
what happened.”G Russell (GB)
Mercedes +45.995sM Verstappen (Neth)
Red Bull 1:34:05.941sConstructors4 5 6 7 8 910
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
NC
NC
NCHow they finished
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910Fastest lap S Pérez 1:46.046L Hamilton (GB) Mercedes +71.679s
P Gasly (Fr) AlphaTauri +77.299s
S Vettel (Ger) Aston Martin +84.099s
F Alonso (Sp) Alpine +88.596s
D Ricciardo (Aus) McLaren +92.207s
L Norris (GB) Aston Martin +92.556s
E Ocon (Fr) Alpine +108.184s
V Bottas (Fin) Alfa Romeo +1 lap
A Albon (Thai) Williams +1 lap
Y Tsunoda (Jap) AlphaTauri +1 lap
M Schumacher (Ger) Haas +1 lap
N Latifi (Can) Williams +1 lap
L Stroll (Can) Aston Martin DNF
K Magnussen (Den) Haas DNF
Z Guanyu (China) Alfa Romeo DNF
C Leclerc (Mon) Ferrari DNF
C Sainz (Sp) Ferrari DNF1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910Verstappen Red Bull 150
Pérez Red Bull 129
Leclerc Ferrari 116
Russell Mercedes 99
Sainz Ferrari 83
Hamilton Mercedes 62
Norris McLaren 50
Bottas Alfa Romeo 40
Ocon Alpine 31
Gasly AlphaTauri 16Driver Team PointsPoints
Red Bull 279
Ferrari 199
Mercedes 161
McLaren 65
Alpine 47
Alfa Romeo 41
AlphaTauri 27
Haas 15
Aston Martin 15
Williams 3S Pérez (Mex) Red Bull
+20.823sAlasdair Reid
suffering. “He is really bad,” Wolff said.
“This is not muscular any more. It goes
properly into the spine and it can have
some consequences. The solution
could be to have someone on reserve,
which we anyway have at every race.”
Rule changes in Formula One have
reintroduced ground-effect aerody-
namics to the sport this season. As a
consequence, the cars have lower ride
heights and stiffer suspensions.
Many drivers have complained of dis-
comfort but the problems appear worse
for Mercedes, whose cars “bottom out”
or “porpoise” — when the bottom of the
car hits the track — at high speed, vio-
lently jolting their drivers.
The back-up drivers available to
Mercedes are Stoffel Vandoorne, the
Belgian who spent two seasons at
McLaren, and the Formula E cham-
pion, Nyck de Vries, the Dutchman.
“That was the most painful and
toughest race I have experienced,”
Hamilton said. “I was biting down on
my teeth due to the pain. I was just pray-
ing for it to end. There were so many
times I was nearly going into the wall.”
After the race Hamilton wrote on social
media: “Even when it’s painful, still we
rise. Thanks for the love, see you all
next week.”
George Russell, Hamilton’s team-
mate, finished third and did not appear
to suffer the same amount of pain.Hamilton took
fourth in Baku
but complained
of severe back
pain, rightc
sVerstappen now has a 21-point
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