Tag: Azerbaijan GP

Baku was a “missed opportunity” for Haas despite Bearman points

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu says there was a big missed opportunity in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite Ollie Bearman scoring a point on his debut for the team. Bearman started from 10th place and ran competitively early on before fading in …

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu says there was a big missed opportunity in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite Ollie Bearman scoring a point on his debut for the team.

Bearman started from 10th place and ran competitively early on before fading in the opening stint, then being involved in a fight with Franco Colapinto and Lewis Hamilton that eventually resulted in a P10 finish. The rookie’s performance was rewarded with a point when Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez crashed late on, but Komatsu believes a top-six finish was a possibility given the car’s pace had the team executed the race more effectively.

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“It’s really mixed, we should have done better,” Komatsu told SiriusXM. “We had really good pace, and certain things were less than ideal so we only came away with a P10, but in my mind we should have finished ahead of [Alex] Albon at least, possibly fighting against [Fernando] Alonso.

“To start off with, the first stint Nico [Hulkenberg] was dong really well and Ollie wasn’t doing so well, but because he was basically over-managing the tires. Yes he could have done better, but from the team’s side we should have done much better – looking at Nico’s data – to tell Ollie ‘the tires are better than expected, you can push more’. So basically Ollie lost race time for no reason during the first stint.

“That’s why we had to swap the drivers during the first stint, which Ollie wasn’t too happy about but I totally understand that the team should have done a better job in the first place so that gave him a chance to up his pace a bit more.

“Then in the second stint on the hard tire, both drivers had amazing pace. Really good pace. Of course we were going to the end and looking at Colapinto and Alonso’s lap times, we were catching them pretty easily. So if Nico could be there and if Ollie had proper first stint pace starting from where he was, he would have been a step better. So we really should have had a chance to beat Alonso and Albon as well.”

While there was a clear loss of time for Bearman in the opening part of the race, Komatsu says it was Hulkenberg who should have scored more heavily but for a number of incidents late on that quickly caught the team out.

“Then with Nico, just before the last yellow flag he hit the wall on the Turn 15 entry with the right front tire. Then he accidentally pressed the in lap button, and he didn’t realize. So of course he felt the car wasn’t right because it wasn’t in timed lap mode, so he had less power.

“So he thought he had a puncture, he panicked, and our communication to solve that problem wasn’t efficient enough. So while he sorted himself out, he lost position to Colapinto, which is so frustrating because he had something like three seconds – a pretty comfortable lead. He shouldn’t have lost that.

“Then when the Sainz shunt happened, Nico was still mentally recovering from that and he hit something big in that yellow section, and when he came out of that yellow section and saw the green he wasn’t ready, so Hamilton already overtook him. So he was out of the points.

“We should have at least come away with four points, minimum, but if we had done better with Ollie earlier it would have been more. Great that we scored one point, but I feel like a big missed opportunity as well. The midfield is so tight, you’ve got to be perfect, you cannot make these mistakes. So that why it is a bit mixed.”

Norris still frustrated with ‘unfair’ Azerbaijan qualifying despite strong race performance

An impressive recovery drive to fourth place in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was not enough for Lando Norris to shake the feeling that he was unfairly eliminated by a yellow flag in qualifying. Norris was on his final timed lap of Q1 and set to improve …

An impressive recovery drive to fourth place in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was not enough for Lando Norris to shake the feeling that he was unfairly eliminated by a yellow flag in qualifying. 

Norris was on his final timed lap of Q1 and set to improve when he came across the slow-moving Esteban Ocon in the final sector – a yellow flag appeared that meant Norris lifted and aborted his lap, despite Ocon having been limping back to the pits with a puncture for some time under a white flag that denotes a slow moving vehicle.

While he climbed through from 15th to finish fourth ahead of Max Verstappen on Sunday, Norris says the incident had a huge impact on his scoring potential.

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“No, it wasn’t fair, you don’t have to be a scientist to work that out,” Norris said. “It’s not for me to decide, it’s not for me to say. It was unfair and for it to ruin my whole weekend… I know I got a fourth and that’s not bad, but it could have been better. Oscar [Piastri] showed what was possible.

“It was unfair. There was no yellow the whole lap and they put a yellow out just as I came past. Did I go off the track just before it? Yes. Would I have still easily got into the top 15? Yes. I know there’s a lot of people that thought it would have ruined my lap, but even with my off track, I only lost a couple of tenths and I still would have easily been in.

“People can say what they want and I find a lot of it funny but this was out of my control and it was something that was unfair. It cost me a good amount of points in the championship and kind of ruined my weekend. So it’s disappointing, especially because of how good the car was. I’m a guy that was thinking of what could have been, not how we did [in the race] necessarily. But I am very happy with [Sunday’s] performance.”

Although he was frustrated by the qualifying result, Norris admits beating Verstappen had not been a realistic target pre-race, with the team predicting eighth place to be the likely outcome.

“A little bit surprised, because when you start 15th you don’t expect to beat him. They all boxed and we were behind them, so I was about 22 seconds behind on real terms to where they were. So to create a gap ahead of him and then to box and still overtake him, I wasn’t expecting to do such a thing.

“But I could defend against Max because he spent six laps trying to catch up, a few laps behind when the Ferrari was behind, and I knew his tires were getting a bit hot so he couldn’t attack me anymore. So I played the game well and I knew I couldn’t defend against Carlos [Sainz], but I could defend against Max.

“But the main point was I defended against Checo [Perez] and allowed him not to get ahead of Oscar, which allowed us to go and get the win. So I did my small part for the team, which I am very happy for because it got us to P1 in the constructors’, so that’s probably the thing that makes me the happiest.”

Leclerc thought he’d reclaim Baku lead from Piastri

Charles Leclerc says he misjudged how the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was going to play out and thought he would be able to re-pass Oscar Piastri to beat the McLaren after being overtaken. Piastri had dropped nearly six seconds adrift of Leclerc prior to …

Charles Leclerc says he misjudged how the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was going to play out and thought he would be able to re-pass Oscar Piastri to beat the McLaren after being overtaken.

Piastri had dropped nearly six seconds adrift of Leclerc prior to the pit stops in Baku, but closed up on the out lap on hard tires and quickly pulled off a clinical move into Turn 1 to take the lead. Leclerc says he could see Piastri might try to overtake on that occasion but that he wasn’t overly worried, believing the race would come back towards him later on.

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“Not really by surprise, because he wasn’t completely straight behind me,” Leclerc said. “He was a little bit on the left. So I could see in my mirrors that he was there and that it was a possibility for him to go there. But I couldn’t really be super aggressive. I still had cold tires. I was really struggling to get those tires into temperature.

“I just thought it wasn’t that much of a big deal if he would overtake me at that point of the race because the race was still long and the DRS would help me to stay within a second of him and then once my tires will be in temperature I could overtake him again. But that was a misjudgment from my side.”

Piastri was able to keep Leclerc at bay and then pulled away from the Ferrari in the closing laps, with Leclerc believing the difference in car set-ups also played a part in him being unable to regain the lead.

“It’s been a pretty frustrating race. We ran two different configurations. They had a lower downforce package. We had a bit more downforce, which made us quite quick in the castle section. However, on all the straights they were flying. And that’s probably where I lost the race. I misjudged that.

“And when Oscar overtook me into Turn 1, I was not too worried. I just wanted to stay within the DRS, keep my tires, and attempt an overtake later on. However, this opportunity never really arose again, just because we were too slow in the straights. Yeah, that was a small misjudgment, which had a big consequence.

“So sometimes it hurts, and it does, but it’s the way it is. On the other hand, it’s been a pretty good last couple of races in terms of performance. This weekend hasn’t been great, because obviously we’ve got Carlos [Sainz] that was in a good position that didn’t manage to finish the race. But within the team, we are in a good position in a good mood and we need to keep pushing in that direction.”

Crash on Perez’s return to form ‘hugely frustrating’ – Horner

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Sergio Perez had the pace to win the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before being taken out of the race in a crash with Carlos Sainz on the penultimate lap. Perez had been battling Charles Leclerc for second place …

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Sergio Perez had the pace to win the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before being taken out of the race in a crash with Carlos Sainz on the penultimate lap.

Perez had been battling Charles Leclerc for second place (pictured) when he became tangled in a duel with Sainz, who was closing in on a podium finish with fresher tires in the final stages of the race.

Sainz slipped past Perez at the first turn but missed the apex at Turn 2, opening the door to the Mexican, who got a better exit to drag the Spaniard side by side down to Turn 3. But the two made heavy contact halfway down the straight that ended with both cars clattering into the barriers, forcing a virtual safety car that effectively ended the grand prix.

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The crash was deemed a racing incident in a post-session investigation, with the stewards declaring that while Sainz was drifting towards the middle of the track, Perez could have done more to avoid the collision.

“It’s hugely frustrating,” Horner said before the stewards issued their ruling. “I’ve just watched the incident several times and you can quite clearly see Carlos — if you take the wall as a reference and the white line on the right-hand side of the track — look in his mirror and just drift to the left, knowing that he was there, and Checo doesn’t move left or right. Hugely frustrating to lose that.”

Horner was particularly disappointed that Perez’s first strong race in months went unrewarded.

“I thought he was super,” he said. “It’s frustrating because Checo certainly should’ve been on the podium at the very least in third place, probably second.

“Actually, he could’ve won that race had he not lost a lot of time behind Alex Albon initially and then Lando [Norris] while he was on new tires and Oscar was still out on the old tires.”

McLaren’s team tactics paid lucrative dividends. While Perez was the first of the leading trio to pit for what should have been a powerful undercut, he happened to rejoin the track behind Norris, who started in 15th and was engaging in a long recovery drive.

Norris was asked to slow Perez to give Piastri an extra lap’s tire offset, and the Briton duly obliged with some clever defensive driving through the castle section that allowed his teammate to rejoin from his pit stop fractionally ahead of Perez.

“Lando backed him up, which allowed Oscar to keep track position, and I think without that we would’ve been ahead of Oscar and he would’ve passed Leclerc and he would’ve been fine,” Horner said.

“I thought Checo had a very strong weekend and he had great pace throughout that race. To sit on the tail of that for the entire grand prix distance — he was on the pace throughout the weekend.

“He was demonstrating race-winning performance today. Of course it’s a track that he’s always excelled at, but I think we’ve understood a few things with the car, and it was good to see certainly Checo’s car in contention for the win throughout the race. It’s just a great shame for him not to have capitalized with a podium, which has been costly in constructors points and in crash damage.”

While the points loss from the crash wasn’t the difference between Red Bull retaining and losing the constructors championship lead, it did allow McLaren to open a healthy 20-point advantage in one fell swoop rather than the more modest margin it was set to claim with Piastri in third.

“We’re pushing hard,” Horner said. “We’re now not defending, we’re chasing, so it changes the dynamic again. We’re just going to throw everything at it.”

Constructors’ lead just the beginning for in-form McLaren

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella wants his team to focus on becoming Formula 1’s dominant team rather than celebrating overtaking Red Bull at the top of the constructors’ championship table. Oscar Piastri’s victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix …

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella wants his team to focus on becoming Formula 1’s dominant team rather than celebrating overtaking Red Bull at the top of the constructors’ championship table.

Oscar Piastri’s victory in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix helped McLaren outscore Red Bull by 28 points, taking it to a 20-point lead at the top of the standings.

It’s the first time in more than a decade that McLaren has led championship, a streak dating back to the 2014 Australian Grand Prix, when Kevin Magnussen and Jenson Button opened the season with second and third in Melbourne.

The result also closes Red Bull’s 55-race run at the top of the table, having taken control of the standings at the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix.

The reigning constructors’ champions wouldn’t have been able to hang on to the lead, even if Sergio Perez had finished third rather than in the barriers after his penultimate-lap crash with Carlos Sainz.

The change in position signals the end of McLaren’s long run in the F1 wilderness and a remarkable turnaround in just the last 18 months, with the team having started 2023 at the back of the grid before bringing a series of fortune-changing upgrades to the car that would lead to this year’s title challenge.

“As a milestone it’s definitely huge because we have to not forget at the start of 2023 we were last when we started the season, and now we lead the classification,” Stella said.

“That’s a huge milestone that has been possible thanks to the great work, the hard work and the quality of the work of the entire team, the support from our shareholders the support from our partners, the fans.

“You achieve this because you achieve it together.”

But Stella isn’t satisfied to have McLaren rest on its laurels, imploring his team to target domination of the sport rather than simple success.

“My way of going racing and for the way I would like the team to go racing, this second is already over,” he said. “We don’t look at the classification; we just focus on executing at every single event, delivering the upgrades that we still plan to take to some of the future races, because the car as a matter of fact is still not fast enough to create some boring races, which is not in the interests of Formula 1 but is in the definitely the way in which we want to go racing.”

Stella also denied the accuracy of the growing paddock consensus that McLaren has the quickest car in the sport, insisting that the frontrunning pack was too finely balanced to pick a standout leader.

“When it comes to McLaren I often hear, ‘McLaren best car, McLaren best car’. I think this is not in the numbers. I think in the numbers McLaren is the best car in some kind of circuits, like Barcelona, Hungary and Zandvoort for good technical reasons, but here I don’t think McLaren enjoyed any advantage over Ferrari and I think not even over Red Bull.

“We have work to do in terms of making the car faster, and we need to remain humble and we need to keep the feet on the ground, because we see that in fairness there’s not much to pick at all between the four top teams.

“It’s just very, very balanced and here I think the execution by the drivers and the execution by the team is just what makes the difference.”

Piastri prevails to win tense Baku battle

Oscar Piastri put on a masterclass in defensive driving to claim his second career victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix ahead of pole-getter Charles Leclerc after a controversial penultimate-lap crash between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz which …

Oscar Piastri put on a masterclass in defensive driving to claim his second career victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix ahead of pole-getter Charles Leclerc after a controversial penultimate-lap crash between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz which forced the race to end under the virtual safety car.

The result puts McLaren into the lead of the constructors’ championship for the first time in a decade, with a 20-point advantage over Red Bull.

Leclerc got the perfect start from pole and comfortably built a 6s buffer over the field while Piastri appeared to struggle with his opening set of mediums.

On a warm day that saw track temperatures soar to 110 degrees F, the Australian’s early parries with the Monegasque soon had him watching his rear-view mirrors for Sergio Perez, who had risen to third place on the first lap in pursuit of his first podium trophy since April.

Perez pulled the undercut trigger first, switching to the hard tire on lap 13. McLaren daringly left Piastri out two laps before pitting him, deploying Lando Norris, who started 15th, as a roadblock to prevent the Mexican from getting an undercut.

Piastri stopped for his own set of hards and rejoined fractionally ahead of Perez, and Leclerc followed suit on the following tour. But on the hard tire the Ferrari looked less impressive. Leclerc’s out-lap was slower than Piastri’s, bringing the McLaren into range, and suddenly the pole-getter was forced onto a defensive footing.

On lap 19 Piastri had hauled himself into DRS range but not close enough to sail past – though the Australian didn’t need it. From several car lengths behind Leclerc, Piastri was magnificent on the brakes, mugging the Ferrari with a perfect dive down the inside to emerge from the corner with the lead.

Leclerc tried to fight back into Turn 2 but was rebuffed, and Piastri only had to cover the inside line at Turn 3 to cement his lead.

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The race turned into a high-speed siege, with the two leaders pushing hard through the middle and final sectors hoping to force each other into a critical mistake exiting Turn 16 that would gift the following cars a slipstream.

Several times Leclerc and Piastri were spotted sliding out of that crucial corner, but both were otherwise error free.

The tense stalemate came to an end on lap 46 of 51, when Leclerc’s 30-lap-old hard tires suddenly gave up the ghost, their grip exhausted from the chase. Piastri bolted, escaping DRS range that lap and then piling on an extra second on the following tour to put his victory beyond doubt after a famous and grueling defensive drive.

“I went for a pretty big lunge but managed to pull it up, then hung on for deal life for the next 35 laps,” he said of his race-winning move. “The last couple of laps once [Leclerc] dropped out of DRS were a little bit more relaxing, but there’s no such thing as a relaxing lap around here.

“That definitely goes down as one of the better races of my career.”

Leclerc’s pain looked sure to be compounded by his rivals massing behind his stricken Ferrari, with Perez on his tail and teammate Carlos Sainz hoping to make a late play for the podium.

Perez made his move on the penultimate lap, sweeping around the Ferrari’s outside at the first turn, but Leclerc wasn’t prepared to let the position go without a fight.

Mustering the last of the grip from his tires, he got late on the brakes into the turn to harry Perez out wide and claim the corner. It cost the Mexican momentum and allowed Sainz to sweep into third. Sainz then had a rebuffed look around Leclerc’s outside into Turn 2, which in turn handed momentum back to Perez.

The pair ran side by side on the run to Turn 3 but dramatically came together halfway down the straight, triggering a big smash that sent both cars spearing into the inside barrier. The virtual safety car was triggered to neutralize the race, allowing Leclerc to cruise to the finish in second place.

“We didn’t do any high-fuel running on my side in FP1 and FP2 and went for a setup direction that maybe in the race was a bit more difficult to manage,” he said. “Especially on the hard tires I was really struggling to keep those rear tires, and towards the end I really thought in one corner or two I would put it in the wall.

“Obviously not a great day for the team.”

George Russell moved through the carnage to an unlikely podium finish for Mercedes, having stopped early, on lap 12, to undercut Max Verstappen for the place he lost to the Dutchman off the line.

“Definitely surprised,” Russell admitted. “We’ve got to be realistic still. We should’ve finished fifth today. That was the true result.

“I don’t want to get carried away with this podium today. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Norris completed an excellent recovery from 15th on the grid to fourth culminating in a lap-49 overtake on title rival Verstappen. The Briton started on the hard tire and ran long, to lap 37, before switching to mediums on which he reeled in Verstappen by more than a second a lap to take the place and take three points out of the Dutchman’s lead, putting him 59 points adrift.

Verstappen, who complained of a lack of grip and dodgy brakes throughout the race, finished fifth ahead of Fernando Alonso.

Williams teammates Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto both had excellent races to finish seventh and eighth, scoring 10 points to move past Alpine for eighth in the constructors standings.

Lewis Hamilton slogged from pit lane to ninth after an overnight engine change, and Haas stand-in Oliver Bearman scored the final point of the race for 10th, becoming the first driver to score points for two different teams in his first two races, having stood in for Sainz at Ferrari in Saudi Arabia earlier in the year.

Polesitter Leclerc ‘at ease’ all weekend despite practice crash

Charles Leclerc says he knew from the moment he took to the track in FP1 that he would be in the mix for his fourth consecutive pole position in Baku. Leclerc’s weekend got off to the worst possible start, with the Monegasque binning has car less …

Charles Leclerc says he knew from the moment he took to the track in FP1 that he would be in the mix for his fourth consecutive pole position in Baku.

Leclerc’s weekend got off to the worst possible start, with the Monegasque binning has car less than halfway into the first practice hour and then losing much of FP2 to an unrelated steering issue. But he said the issues never dented his confidence, which rocketed to sky-high levels from the moment he took to the track on Friday.

“The car felt really good since FP1 and, honestly, we barely changed the car from FP1 to now,” he said. “Straightaway I felt happy, and the balance remained really good.

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“We had to counter a little bit the track evolution, because there was a lot of track evolution, but the feeling was there straightaway in FP1 even though there was not many laps [after the crash]. That didn’t stop us to recover after that and to be at ease for all the weekend.”

Leclerc’s form was so strong that either of his Q3 laps would have been quick enough to take pole, with his margin eventually blowing out to 0.321s.

“It was a good lap,” he said. “I just took a little bit more risk compared to the first run in Q3. It was important to just have a lap on the board and then in the second lap you just take more risk and see what happens. Luckily I finished both of the laps, and they were good laps.”

“Every lap I was doing was quite competitive from Q1, and the balance was feeling really good.”

Leclerc is the Baku City Circuit’s most prolific qualifier, this being his fourth pole position at the eight-year-old venue, but the Ferrari driver was at a loss to explain why he’s so effective around the unusual track.

“It looks like I’m very consistent but I don’t really have the magic answer,” he said. I just like the rhythm of this track. I have been thinking about it, and obviously when you have a good weekend, you try to analyze, but I don’t really have a strong answer to it.

“I guess it just goes with my driving style very naturally. Most of the time you have to work quite a lot to try and gain lap time, but there I just feel good with the rhythm of this track for some reason. That makes it a particularly good track for me. “

Despite Leclerc’s single-lap prowess, he’s yet to turn pole to victory in Azerbaijan, his third-place finish last year his best-ever Baku result.

The Ferrari driver’s prospects of converting this weekend remain unclear, with his disrupted Friday meaning he had no time to conduct a race simulation, but the seven-time grand prix winner was optimistic the SF-24 would be up to the task of scoring back-to-back victories two weeks after winning in Italy.

“I didn’t do a lap with high fuel, but it’s been a pretty strong point of the car this year, so I’m not worried going into tomorrow’s race,” Leclerc said. “Obviously we need to get things right, so I will need to do a bit of homework tonight in order to get ready for tomorrow, but I am not too worried. We will do the best job with our package and then we will see if it’s good enough to win the race or not.

“It would be nice! In 2021 and 2023 it was quite unexpected, the pole positions. We didn’t have the pace in the car to win. In 2022 we had a good car and then the engine blew up, so hopefully the pace is there and we don’t have anything which stops us from winning it.

“But before thinking about the final result, there are still a lot of laps around this track, and it’s a very difficult track, so we will see tomorrow. In the meantime I will just make sure that I am doing the best preparation possible.”

Russell tops final Azerbaijan GP practice

George Russell beat Charles Leclerc to top spot in final practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Russell fired in a purple final sector on his way to a best time of 1m 42.514s, lowering the weekend benchmark by almost a second. Russell’s lap came in …

George Russell beat Charles Leclerc to top spot in final practice at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Russell fired in a purple final sector on his way to a best time of 1m 42.514s, lowering the weekend benchmark by almost a second.

Russell’s lap came in the final two minutes of the session on five-lap-old soft tires, pipping Leclerc by 0.013s.

The time came despite the Briton complaining that “the ride feels terrible down the straight under braking” and after concerns of unusual power unit behavior on the brakes.

Mercedes undertook a precautionary power unit change for Russell car between Friday practice sessions.

Lando Norris completed the top three behind Leclerc and 0.223s off the pace for McLaren, making it three different teams in the top three positions.
He set his flying lap late to pip teammate Oscar Piastri by just 0.012s.

Max Verstappen was fifth fastest for Red Bull and 0.348s off the pace, the Dutchman climbing the order late thanks to a slipstream from teammate Sergio Perez in a bid to counteract his weekend-long struggles in the flat-out final sector.

Carlos Sainz was sixth after having what would have been his final flying lap disrupted by Sergio Perez at the super-fast Turn 15. A second attempt on the same set of tires brought him to sixth and 0.454s off the pace, getting himself ahead of the Mexican in seventh by 0.056s.

Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto impressed for Williams with eighth and ninth in the order, 0.68s and 0.724s off the pace respectively.
Lewis Hamilton finished an anonymous 10th and 0.787s adrift.

Aston Martin and RB competed for 11th, with Fernando Alonso ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.

Pierre Gasly was 15th ahead of sole Haas finisher Nico Hulkenberg, while Sauber teammates Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were last among the drivers to have set times.

Esteban Ocon finished 19th without a time after suffering a power unit problem preparing for his first flying lap, forcing him to stop on track and walk away from his car.

Ocon also lost all of FP1 to an engine problem, necessitating a power unit change before FP2, which he also completed down in 19th place.

His stoppage, coming around a quarter of the way into the hour, suspended the session for nine minutes, though the intermittent drizzle at the time meant few cars were on track to have their programs disrupted.

Oliver Bearman, standing in for the suspended Kevin Magnussen, was classified last, also without a time, after smashing his Haas at the first turn.

Bearman carried too much speed into the corner but attempted too late to bail for the run-off zone, wiping off his front-left corner against the barriers before coming to a stop against the wall.

“I’m such an idiot,” he said before clambering from his car without a lap time set.

Alonso encouraged despite first missed podium of the season

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin can take great encouragement from the fact he nearly finished on the podium in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite feeling the team had a bad weekend, Sergio Perez led home a Red Bull one-two in a race where the two …

Fernando Alonso says Aston Martin can take great encouragement from the fact he nearly finished on the podium in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix despite feeling the team had a bad weekend,

Sergio Perez led home a Red Bull one-two in a race where the two leaders were pushing, leaving Alonso to fight it out with polesitter Charles Leclerc for third place. Leclerc held on by a second on the final lap to end Alonso’s run of consecutive podiums but given how well Ferrari’s weekend panned out the Spaniard says it’s a further statement from Aston to be so close in the race.

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“Yeah it was very good, I’m very happy with the result and the pace of the car,” Alonso said. “I think the weekend was not maybe as competitive as the first three races but even with that I think in the race the car pace was very good, very strong, and we challenged for the podium. Only one second to Charles, so that’s very encouraging for us.

“On let’s say a bad weekend from Aston we are fighting for the podium against one of the best weekends for Ferrari – they were on pole position for the Sprint race, pole position for the main race, and they were just one second in front of us on Sunday, so good news.”

In a race where there was little in the way of action, Alonso did provide a highlight when overtaking Carlos Sainz into Turn 4 – not a traditional passing spot – after the early safety car.

“I had a lot of grip on that restart so I could have him probably in Turn 3 already but then it was into Turn 4. I don’t know, no clear explanation but the car was working really well.

“It was good. It was crucial because to overtake the Ferraris is never easy, so that overtake put me in a train with Charles and the race was easier after that.”

After suffering DRS issues earlier in the weekend, Alonso says he had no such problems during Sunday’s race but, despite the pass on Sainz, he feels his cause wasn’t helped by the timing of that safety car negating Aston Martin’s advantage over Leclerc.

“(DRS) worked, a lot of speed! I’ve never been that fast on the straight for the whole weekend! So I was happy with everything on the car.

“The strength of the car for whatever reason is still the tire degradation that seems a little bit better than the others, unfortunately with the safety car we all put on the hard tires and that tire was very robust until the end. Without that safety car I think the Ferraris were struggling a lot in the first stint, so maybe Miami is a better chance for us.”

“We are more stuck than before” – Wolff

Toto Wolff says the current era of Formula 1 cars have proven themselves to be poor to drive with the focus on which teams can produce the least bad chassis. Red Bull has dominated under the new technical regulations that re-introduced ground effect …

Toto Wolff says the current era of Formula 1 cars have proven themselves to be poor to drive with the focus on which teams can produce the least bad chassis.

Red Bull has dominated under the new technical regulations that re-introduced ground effect and put a lot of emphasis on performance from the floor, with Sergio Perez’s double victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix ensuring it has won every race and Sprint so far this season.

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Wolff says Mercedes’ weakness is not due to its downforce levels but how the car handles, something he says is a frustration about the current rules.

“I think for our car it is more about the ride control than sheer downforce,” Wolff said. “We could put a lot of downforce on the car but the car would be too low and too stiff. (Red Bull) you can see on the onboard, the car is barely moving on the straights or over bumps, corner balance looks easy and you look at all the other onboards and the cars are tricky. So I think generally the ground effect cars are s*** cars, it’s just who has the least s******st is ahead.”

While Wolff is unsure how long it will take for the field to eventually converge towards closer performance levels, he says he doesn’t want to see the regulations changed to try and address Red Bull’s advantage.

“There is always the risk when you look at these cycles if a team is so far ahead, I think (in Baku) they were 20 seconds ahead of Leclerc and after 40 racing laps, so that’s half a second a lap. But at least we have seen they are pushing.

“Half a second is quite a long way to go. Either we have to do a better job all together to catch them up, or change the regulations, but I don’t think we should be doing the second one. So we need to win on merit, and winning on merit means being more clever. Having a steeper development slope than Red Bull.

“I think we can close it. If we get the platform right, it is less about adding ten points of downforce and more about giving the drivers a car that when they turn it into a corner they know the rear doesn’t overtake them. That’s the problem. Then we can catch up, but as we did last year it is better not to change the regulations again, as we did on our initiative to lose it again.”

Stating a belief that Mercedes, Aston Martin and Ferrari were all of the same performance in Baku, Wolff also says the cost cap – while better for F1 overall – limits how quickly the trio can hope to catch up.

“We are more stuck than before because if you would be completely free we would bring a different chassis. So what we have to really decide carefully is what we want to upgrade. So we have a new front suspension for Imola, and then the aero upgrade that comes with it and floor.

“But if we were free we would bring double the amount of upgrades, but so would the others. It’s a relative game and you just need to be clever and taking the right decisions that bring the optimum amount of performance.”