Formula 1: Verstappen, Leclerc and Pérez arrive at the Azerbaijan GP tight with 15 points and with a latent inside

After seven races disputed, the top three finishers of the Formula 1 World Championship arrive this weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with a handkerchief of 15 points and any of them could leave the Baku city circuit as championship leader.

Dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull) leads the world championship with 125 points, out of 116 from the Monegasque Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc and the 110 from Mexican Sergio Pérez, who has just renewed his contract with the Red Bull team. In the constructors’ classification, Red Bull has 235 points, 36 more than Ferrari.

Verstappen and his teammate Pérez – who just won in Munich and won in Baku a year ago – will look to transfer the dominance of their team – which leads both rankings – to Azerbaijan: home of the eighth race of the year.

‘Checo’ took his third F1 win – the first of the year – two Sundays ago on the streets of Monaco, just before Red Bull announced the extension of his contract until 2024. The Mexican won, in front of the Spaniard Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) – who repeated the second place obtained a year ago in the principality of the Côte d’Azur – and Verstappen, a race marked by rain (which delayed the start and forced to shorten the route), which the Monegasque Charles Leclerc, who started from the ‘pole’, finished fourth, due to a strategic mistake by the ‘Scuderia’; and that the other Spaniard, the double Asturian world champion Fernando Alonso (Alpine), finished seventh.

The Baku street circuit, 6,003 meters long, has twenty bends -12 to the left and eight to the right-, two DRS zones and the longest straight of the entire championship, 2.2 kilometers. Therefore, like the one in Montreal (Canada), which will host the next Grand Prix, just a weekend later, it prefers single-seaters with higher top speeds; which, on paper, are the Red Bulls; which, on the track closest to that of Azerbaijan, that of Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), were far superior to the Ferraris in this respect.

In the third longest track in the world -after Spa (Belgium) and Jeddah-, the teams will have to look for the configuration that allows the cars to go fast on the long main straight and at the same time get enough downforce in view of the slower corners in the first two of the three sectors of the same.

Czech, in his “talisman” circuit.

“I am very happy to have extended my contract until at least 2024”, commented ‘Checo’ before traveling to Azerbaijan, where he has been racing since 2016: on one of his ‘talisman’ tracks, where no one matches his three podiums. “Having decided my future will allow me to be one hundred percent focused on the goal of fighting for victories and world titles,” added the Mexican, who claims to be “in the best moment of his” sports career “.

Azerbaijan joined the F1 World Championship in 2016, on that occasion as the European Grand Prix, which ended with the victory of the German Nico Rosberg (Mercedes), world champion that year, and with the third place of Pérez, aboard a Force India.

Since 2017 – and with the exception of 2020, due to the pandemic -, the Grand Prix has always been held under the name of the country; and no one has repeated the victory, on a track where there is a high probability of safety car entry. And in which every year there has been a different ‘poleman’.

‘Checo’ finished third in 2018; and he won last year, in a crazy race; in which, while driving towards a victory that seemed certain, Verstappen crashed. The race was relaunched with two laps to go and the driver from Guadalajara (Jalisco) also took advantage of another mistake by Hamilton to celebrate what then – after that of Sakhir, Bahrain, in 2020 – was his second victory in the F1 race. ; in a vibrant finish for Alonso, who, in one fell swoop, advanced four places to go from tenth to sixth.

Verstappen, proudly wounded

Checo’s victory in Monaco and his good position in the annual rankings are starting to make noise at Red Bull. Does the champion deserve some kind of privilege when it comes to strategies? None other than Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, spoke on the subject. and he did so through a letter that marked the pitch for Christian Horner, director of the Austrian team.

“Red Bull achieved a good result, but at the same time exerted little influence to help Max get to the top,” said Jos, a man with few fleas and a very distinctive profile.

“To the leader of the championship, Max. The chosen strategy did not help him in this sense. He turned completely in Checo’s favor. For me it was a disappointment, and I would have liked it to have been different for the championship leader ”, complained the former driver, also acknowledging his lack of objectivity in giving his opinion on his son.

And he closed: “I would have liked to have taken Max, but obviously I’m not entirely objective. I think that here ten points have been thrown by Max. Especially with the two retirements we had, we need all the points.”

Verstappen Jr., for his part, was only focused on thinking about his next goal, the Azerbaijani GP.

“I already want to go back to Baku; I still have to finish a job that I didn’t finish last year,” said Mad Max, ahead of the eighth of the 22 Grands Prix of the year, whose free practice will start this Friday and will end. Saturday, hours before the ranking.

With information from Agencies