Mark Hughes: Epic Baku battle a flashback to when F1 was flat-out

The true competitive order of the whole weekend only slotted itself into place after two quick-fire safety cars late in the race put Max Verstappen’s Red Bull tight behind George Russell’s Mercedes. With 11 laps to go an epic flat-out battle between them unfolded, decided in Russell’s favour on the line by 0.196sec.

Up until the safety cars Russell had been enjoying a charmed weekend. Sure, he had grabbed the opportunity of the Mercedes pace advantage around Baku with both hands, delivering a brilliantly dynamic pole position, over 0.8sec clear of the field. He’d been helped by the fact that in the other Mercedes Kimi Antonelli carelessly hit the wall in Q1 and so started only 16th. He was helped by the fact that what was actually the second-fastest car around here, the Red Bull, had qualified behind slower Ferraris and McLarens. He was helped by Oscar Piastri’s dogged defence of second place for lap after lap as the faster Red Bulls snapped at the McLaren’s heels while Russell escaped. It looked very much like Piastri was going to help win Russell this race, George’s gap out to over 11sec before the lap 31 safety car for Alex Albon’s crashed Williams.

Even the tyre choices made by Piastri (C5 softs) and Verstappen (C4 mediums) for the start played in Russell’s favour. For the soft was much the better tyre and Russell had started on the medium. He wasn’t being punished for that because the Mercedes was so much faster than the McLaren – and because Piastri was able to use the soft’s better traction to always stay out of reach of Verstappen.

The Ferrari and, especially, the McLaren were slow down the long straight for reasons of power unit and gearing respectively. The Mercedes with its long gearing, low drag and perfect deployment was vastly faster. The Red Bull is especially aero efficient in low-downforce trim, its Powertrains motor is strong and the team has recently made good progress in endowing it with decent through-corner balance. But the power unit in Verstappen’s car dramatically lost power through qualifying, leaving him only eighth on the grid, four places and 0.5sec behind his team-mate, the returning Isack Hadjar.

Were it not for that Verstappen was confident he could comfortably have slotted himself into the big gap between Russell and Charles Leclerc on the grid. The Ferrari was on the front row also because it’s Leclerc who remains brilliant around Baku even though, “the car wasn’t giving me the usual feelings I have around here to take it super-close to the walls.” Lewis Hamilton in the other car gave him 0.15sec-worth of tow – it was Leclerc’s turn this weekend to decide the running order – but he outqualified the tow-less Hamilton by 0.5sec and four places.

Ferrari had originally been planning to change Leclerc’s ADUO 1-spec motor for a new ADUO 2 unit and that was going to put him to the back of the grid. But tests at the factory had revealed that the ADUO 2 motor believed terminally damaged in Leclerc’s Monza crash was actually ok – and so it was installed in his car for here. No penalty necessary and so another delay for Verstappen – with a fresh Powertrains unit from the existing pool for race day – in reaching Russell, even before he got to unyielding Piastri.

But the Ferrari was never likely to be able to stay where Leclerc had qualified it. “When we are in the situation we are in with the engine” said team boss Frederic Vasseur, “and you want to defend, you go into a sort of negative spiral because you try to run a bit lower downforce than the optimum and you lose lap time. We had a similar case in Monza.”

With its new sidepods and floor, the McLaren should have been faster than it was even though this track was never going to see it at its best – all the corners are slow and short and the straight is too long for the short gearing. Lando Norris was nowhere with it, slower than Piastri in qualifying and passed in quick succession early in the race by the Red Bulls and Hamilton. There was something amiss in the fuel injection. On lap 30 he locked up at Turn 1 and dropped two places to 10th. But in Piastri’s hands it was devastatingly fast through the old town section, where the short gearing was perfect and allowed Oscar to pull out the required distance on Verstappen each lap to leave the Red Bull with too much distance to make up on the long straight. So even the McLaren’s short gearing was helping Russell. Who really didn’t want Verstappen on his back.

It was all going swimmingly for him. Until Albon nosed hard into the Turn 5 tyre barriers. He’d been dicing hard with Esteban Ocon’s Haas for 13th and approaching Turn 5, “I braked a little bit later than the previous lap and there was a big wind gust which caught me out a little bit. I had my moment; I thought I would lock up and run a bit wide. I didn’t think it was going to hit the wall.” The Williams is always the car most likely to lock its fronts when the rears stop harvesting and the brake balance shifts forwards, even seemingly in its lighter updated form here. That trait turned the race as everyone piled into the pits for their single tyre change and lined up tightly behind the safety car, with the compounds now transposed, Russell on softs, Piastri mediums, Verstappen softs, Hadjar mediums.

Russell’s 11sec advantage was wiped and Verstappen sensed his chance of ambushing Piastri at the restart. Russell timed things perfectly to retain his lead but Piastri left a chink of daylight which Verstappen immediately filled. On the slow-to-warm medium tyres Piastri was never going to brake as late as a soft-tyred and highly-motivated Verstappen in a Red Bull which brakes better than any other car. Verstappen was through with 16 laps to go, giving Russell a challenge he thought he’d escaped.

But behind there was chaos as Franco Colapinto got way too hot on the brakes in his Alpine, locked up and took out team-mate Pierre Gasly (running nicely in eighth, having just let through the recovering Antonelli). Gasly’s spinning car in turn took out Norris. With three wrecked on the track, the safety car was immediately redeployed. The Racing Bulls had also collided, Lindblad into the innocent Lawson, but they got going again. On the next restart Russell again held onto his lead but Verstappen was hot on his tail, regularly getting to within less than 1sec at the detection point before Turn 16 and thus having overtake boost available.

A lap after the restart Piastri, under big pressure from Hadjar, locked up heavily into Turn 1, falling almost to the back as he rejoined. Like this, the Red Bull returnee earned a podium place. He’d played the team game, pulled aside for Verstappen in the first stint then – on the faster soft tyres – sat right behind him until the safety car stops swopped their tyre performance around. It was a great performance, but he was about to be left far behind as the two soft-tyred gunslingers went at it, now with just 11 laps left.

It was an exhilarating experience for them around this place, as Russell recounted: “The tyre felt great. We were pushing flat out every single lap. It was like qualifying one after another. You needed to be so alert around this circuit because the walls are so close, especially through the castle. You’re threading the needle. But, yeah, those final 10 laps felt really, really fun. And it almost felt like the stories I hear of the drivers in the early-mid 2000s, of when every lap was like a qualifying lap. The heart rate is higher, you’re pushing the limit every single lap, there’s no management. We’ve had a lot of conversations this year about PU energy management, but the tyre management is still there and it has been there for years and years. But just with how the temperatures and the circuit fell out today, with the tyres there was no management, and that was exceptionally fun.”

Verstappen left his tyre marks on the Turn 16 entry walls a couple of times, Russell gathered up a big moment out of Turn 1 – but immediately followed that up with the fastest sector 2 time of the race. Just as it looked as if Russell had it all under control on the last lap, they encountered yellow flags at Turn 15 where Valtteri Bottas had just hit the wall: “I had a lockup into Turn 1 and went wide,” he explained, “so I think the systems got somewhat confused because of the extra distance I’d driven. I suffered a huge super clip into Turn 15 and when I hit the brakes, only the front worked and it felt as if the rears weren’t harvesting anymore.”

Russell backed off for the yellows, then as he went back on the gas suffered terrible turbo lag and what had been a 1sec gap to Verstappen came down to tenths. That’s how close they entered the straight for the final time and across the line Russell was ahead by only 0.196sec.

Some way behind Hadjar, Leclerc just held off the recovering Antonelli who had used his soft tyres to pass the medium-tyred Hamilton. Lindblad sneaked across the line 0.03sec ahead of Ocon for seventh with Oliver Bearman’s Haas and Carlos Sainz’s Williams taking the last points-paying places.

Antonelli still comfortably leads the championship after his weakest performance of the season. It had all begun to get away from him when he lost the hydraulics on Friday. But that should have been recoverable. Instead, with Russell two steps ahead of him he tried to make it all up immediately in qualifying. “Totally unnecessary,” he scolded himself. “It brought me back to earth, reminded me I need to be on top of it all the time.” Easy to forget that the runaway championship leader is just 20 years old and in his second season of F1. Don’t bet on too many repeats.