F1: Perez Wins In Baku As Chaos Breaks Out In The Pit Lane

A largely uneventful race in Baku, which only had some late pit lane drama to offer, was won by RedBull’s Sergio Perez. The Mexican driver secured a much-needed victory that helped him reduce his teammate Max Verstappen’s championship lead to just eight points. 

The race saw a fairly easy battle between the Red Bull drivers and Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who clinched pole position on Friday but failed to match the pace of the Red Bulls on race day.

The race took an unexpected turn when Nyck de Vries of AlphaTauri hit the inside wall at Turn 5, causing his car's front-left suspension to break. This prompted a safety car intervention, and Verstappen, who was struggling with rear grip, was called into the pits just before the safety car was deployed. 

Perez, Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, and Lance Stroll stopped a lap later than Verstappen, fitting the preferred hard-compound tyre. Perez seized the lead behind the safety car, while Verstappen trailed in third place behind Leclerc.

The race resumed on lap 14 of 51, and Verstappen wasted no time re-passing Leclerc's Ferrari. The two Red Bull drivers then engaged in a heated battle, with Verstappen trading fastest laps with Perez. However, Perez managed to keep Verstappen at bay, building a crucial 1.5-second lead that he maintained throughout the next phase of the race. Verstappen began struggling with the balance of his RB19, which allowed Perez to increase his lead to over 2 seconds.

Although Verstappen felt hard done by over the safety car timing, Perez proved to be the quicker driver on the day, putting Verstappen under pressure even before the pit stop. Perez secured his second and most impressive victory of the season so far, finishing 2.1 seconds ahead of Verstappen. Leclerc completed the podium, over 19 seconds behind the Red Bulls and just shy of a second clear of Alonso’s Aston Martin.

Meanwhile, Alonso spotted Hamilton’s Mercedes struggling with graining rear tyres in the early phase of the race and knew he could capitalise on it. Hamilton needed to pit before the safety car appeared, which pushed Alonso up to fifth place before the restart. The two-time world champion then made a brilliantly opportunistic pass on Sainz at Turn 4, securing fourth place.

Stroll had an excellent start to the race, overtaking Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri and Lando Norris’s McLaren on the first lap to rise to seventh place. Hamilton, who started fifth, dropped down to tenth place before the safety car restart, but he bounced back, overtaking his teammate Russell to finish in seventh place. Sainz struggled all weekend to feel comfortable in his Ferrari, using the same setup he had employed to great effect in the Australian Grand Prix before his late penalty.

Not everyone was able to capitalise on the opportunities presented to them. Take George Russell, for instance. He was lucky enough to benefit from the safety car intervention, but unfortunately, he couldn't make the most of it. Despite not being far behind Lance Stroll, he made a lacklustre restart, leaving him to finish in eighth place.

Meanwhile, Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg had a different strategy. They decided to break the parc ferme rules and make set-up changes before the race, resulting in a pit lane start on the hardest tyre. Surprisingly, they managed to rise to the bottom of the top 10, each avoiding a pit stop until Lando Norris took advantage of an error to overtake Hulkenberg's Haas.

However towards the end, Hulkenberg's tyres were clearly giving up, and he lost more places to Yuki Tsunoda, Oscar Piastri's McLaren, Alex Albon's Williams, and Kevin Magnussen's Haas before eventually being called into the pits on the penultimate lap. Alpine and Haas were banking on a second safety car intervention that never materialised, so having to make a mandatory pitstop under racing conditions dropped Ocon out of the top 10, meaning that Norris and Tsunoda rounded out the points scorers. It was a rollercoaster ride for everyone involved, but only a few could manage to come out on top.

The real controversy came on the last lap as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix stewards lashed out at the FIA for a pit lane incident that could have had severe consequences. In a mandatory pit stop ahead of the final lap, Esteban Ocon found himself in a dicey situation, encountering a horde of media personnel and a makeshift barrier placed in the fast lane. The stewards declared this to be an extremely dangerous situation and stated the FIA was lucky to have gotten away without any severe consequences. 

Surprisingly, the FIA claims that this is a common occurrence during the parc ferme and podium ceremony preparations. Alpine, Ocon's team, questioned the need to grant access to a live pit lane and compared it to the chaotic scenes from Group B rallying. The stewards have asked the FIA to take immediate action and revise their procedures to prevent such a situation from ever happening again. The FIA has pledged to tighten control over who can enter the pit lane and when, and where they can go, to ensure everyone's safety.

The finishing order of the race was as follows:

1. Sergio Perez, RedBull
2. Max Verstappen, RedBull
3. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
4. Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin
5. Carlos Sainz, Ferrari
6. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
7. Lance Stroll, Aston Martin
8. George Russell, Mercedes
9. Lando Norris, McLaren
10. Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri
11. Oscar Piastri, McLaren
12. Alex Albon, Williams
13. Kevin Magnussen, Haas
14. Pierre Gasly, Alpine
15. Esteban Ocon, Alpine
16. Logan Sargeant, Williams
17. Nico Hulkenberg, Haas
18. Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo
19. (DNF) Guanyu Zhou, Alfa Romeo
20. (DNF) Nyck De Vries, AlphaTauri