There’s usually a lot of chaos at Baku which shakes things up, so many people tend to forget that incident-free races here tend to be pretty boring. Despite the huge straight you need a massive pace delta to overtake, and while it’s possible to overtake at a couple of spots in sector 1 it’s far from easy.

With the tyre situation as it is I can’t help but think Pirelli maybe should have gambled on C3-C5-C6 in the hopes of forcing a two-stopper. As it is we had pretty much no deg, the undercut was not particularly powerful and the strategy was fairly uninteresting. We had some early stop gambles in Alonso and Leclerc but neither seemed to have gained much from it. Though Alonso did have a penalty to take at his stop for being tricked into false starting himself because of Piastri.

Biggest winner today (apart from Sainz of course) was Merc I think, who once again looked great in the cold temps. Fantastic drive from Mr. Consistency as usual but Antonelli actually looked really good today. One of the few drivers who posted multiple on-track overtakes and had good pace throughout, very promising signs after a rough season.

Shambles of a weekend for McLaren as everything went wrong everywhere - crashes, a slow stop and poor pace on top of a false start for Piastri and Lando sleeping on the SC restart. And all that when it seems Red Bull have finally caught a second wind. Max will always be Max, but take one look at Yuki today and you’ll realise something has happened to the car. With two huge margin wins back-to-back for Max I think the WDC fight is very much on.

Can’t fault anyone for voting for Sainz as DOTD but my vote has to go to Lawson. I’m not a fan of the guy and I think he’s been more underwhelming than not, but he was good this weekend and displayed great defensive driving to keep faster cars behind the whole race. It must suck for him to feel like he missed out on a podium, but realistically he extracted all there was in this race with a very good drive.

How did we get such a tedious race? On paper it looks crazy. Piastri out Lap 1 was wild. And then…

I mean, there were some promising fights brewing. Some short fun fights did happen… But I started hoovering and dusting at around lap 25 because I felt like I was just wasting time sitting on my arse watching this race.

What a puzzling race. Would never have expected any of what happened to Piastri. Lando was in a perfect position to capitalise from all this, and didn’t, typical.

I was totally proven wrong by both Yuki and Lando. I thought yuki would struggle with race pace and slide backwards like last time in Monza but he held his own. On the other hand, I expected Lando to charge through the lower points positions and reach the top 3 but it never happened.

Probably a controversial take but this race is a perfect example of why I think Lando doesn’t have what it takes to win the WDC. Piastri putting in the wall gave Lando the perfect opportunity to make up points and he finished exactly where he started. You do not win a championship if you don’t go for the points that are left on the table. If Lando somehow gets the WDC it’s not because he won it, it would be because Piastri lost it.

Classic Lando bottle job Pt 2.

Sainz got on the podium before Hamilton. Waste of $100 million.

Be Russell do nothing. Finish in P2.

Ever since Horner was dropped. Max is back to being Max again. He’s only 69 points behind.

I was quite confused by Russell’s race. He just sorta went along quietly, and I was expecting that he’d drop back after his pitstop but then somehow he ended second. Good race by him but I still don’t really know how he did it