It’s been a weekend of crashes at the Azerbaijan GP! During practice a Williams hit a drain, the recovery van carrying said Williams crashes into one of the overhead bridges, during qualifying Kubica manages to smash his Williams into a wall (VERY bad weekend for Williams) and finally our boy Leclerc loses it on the exact same corner and smashes into the wall as well! Let’s hope the race runs a bit smoother for both cars.
First Phase
Bottas almost loses his pole position to Hamilton with both cars running side by side into turn one. Bottas was VERY close to that wall there.
Lando Norris gains a position and is up to 6th place before the end of the lap.
Unfortunately, our boy Leclerc loses two grid places in the first lap and is now down to 10th.
By lap 3 Leclerc has Ricciardo….. and by lap 4 is back up to his starting position of 8th place.
Lap 6 – oh hang on, Leclerc has managed to jump Norris and is into 6th place…. hold up! Another place gained and he’s into 5th!
Lap 12 – Leclerc up to 4th and is within .7s of Vettel… could be an interesting battle there. Ah no, Vettel pits…. wimp! 😉
Lap 14 – notice comes through that Kubica has been given a drive through penalty for leaving the pits too early at the start of the race. Seems harsh… and pointless considering they’re running at the bottom of the grid.
Lap 15 – Leclerc is leading the race after both the Mercedes cars pit. According to the stats, there’s a 36% chance of him staying ahead of Hamilton.
Lap 19 – the commentators just picked up that Bottas is being given orders to slow down. But as they say, he’s also battling Hamilton for world championship points as well. At the moment, surely it’s a fair game?
Lap 25 – Move over Mystic Meg, we have a new clairvoyant in town. Husband’s words…. “we need a safety car or something. Grosjean where are you?” At that EXACT moment Grosjean takes a spin! Spooky!!
Lap 26 – uh oh. Leclerc and Verstappen looking like they’re going to be battling soon despite the fact Leclerc is in pole and Verstappen currently in 5th. As soon as Leclerc pits he’ll drop a few places.
Lap 28 – Ted utters the words, “no one’s crashed into the wall and no retirements yet”. COMMENTATOR’S CURSE??? We shall see if something happens over the next few laps.
Lap 32 – a bit of a blunder by Ricciardo in turn 3. Doesn’t manage to brake in time and catches Kvyat on the run off area. They don’t collide on the corner….. until Ricciardo reverses into Kvyat whilst trying to rejoin the race. Causes enough damage to Ricciardo’s car giving him yet another DNF. That’s 3 DNFs in the last 4 races.
Lap 34 – finally Ferrari pit Leclerc! He’s been falling down due to the old tyres. Not a bad pit stop but not the best either. Leclerc rejoins just behind Gasly.
Lap 35 – Kvyat also suffers a DNF post Ricciardo’s turn 3 blunder. Incident is under investigation.
Final Phase
Lap 40 – Ah poor Gasly has had to retire. Not sure what’s happened. Virtual Safety Car Deployed which is rubbish! It means that the drivers are not allowed to overtake under the VSC conditions and must reduce speed by 40%. The difference is that the pack doesn’t bunch up under VSC whereas with the traditional safety car, the pack would bunch up giving us an awesome restart action.
Lap 42 – Leclerc lost a lot of time behind the VSC. Currently 28s behind Verstappen. Unlikely he’ll catch up now with 9 laps to go. I guess it’s time for me to say goodbye to the £1 I had on him to win the race! 🙁 Boo!
Lap 48 – Ferrari pit Leclerc for new tyres. Not sure what the point of that is but there you go. In my opinion, it’s about 25 laps too late. Oh it’s so he can go for the fastest lap. Ohhhhhhh….. every point helps I guess.
Lap 51 – Leclerc gets the fastest lap – at least he gets that done!
Podium
1st Place – Bottas [Mercedes]
2nd Place – Hamilton [Mercedes]
3rd Place – Vettel [Ferrari]
Overall Thoughts
Meh….. not very exciting race. However that’s probably because it wasn’t terribly exciting for my driver(s). Despite that, both the husband and I would love to attend the Azerbaijan GP – Baku looks like such a lovely city.
Baku is a race I alike love to attend too. The race was this time may not have had that many crashes but that’s rare. I agree vsc is no where near as good we needed an actual safety car. Hate to say it but think the world champ is already bottas or Hamilton. Ferrai left your man way to long and cost him a podium in my opinion. Hopefully we get a better race in Barcelona.