Good month, bad month: Who’s on the up and who’s on the slide in F1

GOOD MONTH

 

Old dog, Newey tricks

Adrian Newey has jumped ship to Aston for an eye-watering £30m-a-year and shares in the team, potentially making him F1’s first billionaire engineer. Will it be worth it?

 

Colapointo

Williams supersub Franco Colapinto outscored his predecessor Logan Sargeant’s entire F1 career with a single eighth-place finish in Baku.

 

F1’s coolest customer

Good to see Piastri completely ignore his race engineer’s advice to look after tyres in Baku and instead fling it up the inside of Leclerc to snatch the race win. Heroic!

 

Bearing it all

Despite having a rubbish F2 season (for a variety of reasons) Oliver Bearman demonstrated just why he’s so highly rated by scoring a valuable point for Haas in just his second F1 start.

 

Macca’s back

McLaren has come out of the doldrums to lead the constructors’ championship for the first time in 10 years. Bruce must be smiling down.

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BAD MONTH

 

Amateur hour

Piastri and Leclerc go at it for 40 laps in Azerbaijan, no problem. Pérez and Sainz start to squabble and last about 40yd before putting it in the Baku barriers.

 

End of the road

Eight time GP winner Daniel Ricciardo cut an emotional figure post Singapore after apparently being axed by Red Bull B-team VCARB, albeit with no official announcement. Go well, Honey Badger.

 

Cursed presidency

FIA president Must Be Seen (sorry, Mohammed Ben Sulayem) has now tried to stop drivers swearing when driving 200mph race cars. Doesn’t he have more pressing matters?

 

Earning the pennies

Lance Stroll got all philosophical by declaring, “This is not a car,” while wrestling his Aston Martin round Baku during practice. Better crack out the drawing board early Adrian.

 

Poles apart

After surprising in Monza, Ferrari reverted to type by converting another brilliant Leclerc Baku pole into a limp race effort. Will it sharpen up in time for Hamilton?