okay, baku was…a lot
I honestly don’t even know where to start. We had a George Russell win, Max Verstappen putting the pressure on right until the end, a painful crash involving Franco Colapinto, another Turn 1 mistake from Oscar Piastri, and Kimi Antonelli somehow going from P16 to P5.
So yeah. Definitely not a boring Sunday.
I’m really happy for George
I’m genuinely happy that he got this win.
After the pressure and the difficult weekends he’s had recently, seeing him finally take another victory was just really nice. And it wasn’t an easy one either. He had Verstappen closing in towards the end, and suddenly those last few laps felt a lot more stressful than they needed to.
And yes, I know I’m probably biased here — but I was absolutely not enjoying seeing that gap come down.
Verstappen was getting way too close
I’m not exactly Verstappen’s biggest fan, so I’m not going to pretend I was sitting there hoping he would catch Russell.
Quite the opposite.
Watching him close the gap towards the end had me stressed. He had started P8 and still managed to fight his way all the way to P2, so credit where it’s due — that was a strong recovery.
But once he was behind George?
No thank you. I was perfectly happy with the gap Russell had before that.
And then there was Colapinto…
The Colapinto crash genuinely caught me off guard.
The lock-up into Turn 1 ended his race and also affected Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris, which made the whole situation even more frustrating.
I especially felt bad for Lando. His season really hasn’t gone the way he would have wanted, and having another race affected by something that wasn’t really in his control just makes it worse.
Sometimes Formula 1 is just incredibly unfair.
Piastri… ouch.
Oscar Piastri’s race was another one where I just went:
Ouch.
That Turn 1 mistake completely changed his race.
He ended up finishing P14, which is obviously a huge difference from what could have been expected before the mistake. It’s one of those moments where one small error has a massive consequence.
Baku really doesn’t give you much room to recover from mistakes.
I really don’t want to move on without talking about Isack Hadjar, because I thought his entire Baku weekend was seriously impressive.
He came back after missing three races with a wrist injury, and this was his first weekend back in the car. Even before the race, he was already showing that he hadn’t come back just to quietly settle in. He put the Red Bull P4 in qualifying, only 0.137 seconds behind Leclerc in P2. Considering he had missed three consecutive race weekends, that was already a pretty strong statement.
But honestly, I thought his race was even more impressive.
He was in the fight from the beginning and didn’t seem to panic when the race started getting messy. There were two Safety Car periods, incidents around him and a lot of drivers losing positions or completely falling out of contention. Hadjar just kept his head down and stayed in the right places.
And tactically, I thought he handled the race really well.
He didn’t need to do anything crazy. He protected what he had, made the most of the opportunities in front of him and, most importantly, kept the car clean. In a race like Baku, where one small mistake can completely destroy your afternoon, that matters a lot.
While Piastri lost a potential podium after his Turn 1 mistake and several other drivers got caught up in incidents, Hadjar kept putting himself in a position to benefit from the chaos. And when the race settled down, he was still there.
P3.
Not because he was simply handed a podium, but because he put himself in the position to take it.
He also had to manage the situation behind him while Verstappen was fighting at the front and Russell was controlling the race. Hadjar ended up 10.7 seconds behind Russell and more than three seconds ahead of Leclerc, which shows that he wasn’t just hanging onto the final podium spot by a few tenths.
For me, that’s what made this weekend so impressive.
Coming back from an injury, getting straight into Q3, qualifying P4 and then delivering a calm, mistake-free P3 in a chaotic street race?
Yeah. Hadjar absolutely deserves credit for this one.
And then there’s Kimi.
Starting P16 and finishing P5 is a pretty serious recovery.
The Safety Car periods definitely helped, but you still have to actually make something of those opportunities — and he did.
Going from the back of the grid to finishing just outside the podium places is something I’m very happy to see.
I’m not going to turn this into a massive Kimi appreciation paragraph because we all know I could probably do that, but…
P16 to P5.
Yeah. I’ll take that.
So… Baku
This race had pretty much everything I personally want from a Formula 1 weekend: unexpected results, mistakes, recovery drives, pressure at the front and a finish that actually had me sitting there thinking, please don’t let anything happen now.
- George got the win.
- Max finished second.
- Hadjar took another podium.
- Kimi recovered from P16 to P5.
And somehow, after all of that, I’m actually pretty happy with how Baku ended.Baku, you were stressful.
But I’ll definitely take this one.