Dre’s Qualifying Clean-Up – F1’s 2025 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

“Rattled.”

Hey everyone and welcome back to another edition of Dre’s Race Review Qualifying clean-up operation because we just couldn’t have another Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku with some chaos across the weekend that had a dramatic effect on the running order, some more unlikely heroes with a smooth operator on the podium, and of course in the end - Max Verstappen wins. Let’s get into it.

Game Of Flags

Qualifying rarely features in this series, but this was such a spectacular shitshow, I had to include it here. Remember last month when Stefano Domenicalli said that younger F1 fans don’t have the attention spans for this sport? I sincerely hope they were able to handle a session that lasted 117 minutes! A Qualifying session longer than every race in 2025 so far, almost touching the 2 hour conventional race time limit, and of course, six red flags. I’m not sure I saw that many from China in the Athletics World Championships this past week. Let’s break them down:

🚩- Alex Albon knocks himself out of Q1 after the rare Turn 1 INSIDE kerb hit, wrecking his car. 

🚩🚩- Nico Hulkenberg continuing his struggles in qualifying this season with locking up into Turn 4, and hitting the outside wall. He’s able to get it going again, despite losing a front wing, but still gets eliminated in Q1.

🚩🚩🚩- Alpine self-destruction. Pierre Gasly goes wide at Turn 4 himself and goes into the escape road. Franco Colapinto fully commits to the corner, but loses the rear on entry and spins into the outside wall in a full-blown wreck. Both Alpines were also eliminated in Q1.

🚩🚩🚩🚩- Float! Float! OLLLLLLLLLIVER! Bearman slides the rear of his car into the outside wall at Turn 2 and breaks the suspension, causing his Haas to crab. Game over. 

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩- Into Q3, and Charles Leclerc slides into the outside wall at Turn 151 and smashes into the outside barrier. Charles was gunning to be just the fifth driver ever to score five pole positions in a row on the same track, but that ultimately didn’t happen. 

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩- And in the biggest shock of them all, Oscar Piastri makes a huge mistake and goes into Turn 3 way too hot, doesn’t take the escape road and smashes into the outside wall, writing off a survival cell in the process. Six Red flags, breaking the record from Brazil last year for the most ever in an F1 session. Yikes.

Worth mentioning we had genuine rain in Baku for what I think was the first time ever. Not enough to call for Inters, but enough where any touch of the paint was treacherous. Carlos Sainz got a lap in before the worst of the weather and for 11 and a half of the 12 minutes, he looked set for pole. But it was a last minute bit of brilliance from Max to take pole at the death by nearly half a second. Going last with the most rubber down was the move. Lando Norris was at the other end of the track having got out first but couldn’t get the heat into the tires and ended up in P7. Remember that, it becomes important later.

Keep Calm And Max Verstappen

It’s funny with F1. One of the golden rules of the sport is that if the Friday practice or Saturday qualifying ends up chaotic, the race itself will be the opposite. And the sporting gods woke up and… went straight back to bed again.

It did tease us about what could have been. At the start, Oscar Piastri jumps the start and in worse news, hits the anti-stall out of the box and sinks to the back of the field. (Fernando Alonso also jumped in reaction to Oscar). Oscar caught back up to the end of the queue, but then completely missed his braking point into Turn 5 and… you guessed it, ploughed into the outside wall. Oscar was an 80% favourite to win the title going into this weekend, and just like that, he opens the door in the title race again.

But to everyone’s surprise, Lando Norris can’t really punish him. McLaren’s gameplan was to run Lando as long as possible on his starting medium tire in the hope for a Safety Car or Red Flag to reset the running order. Sadly for him, after that initial drama, there were no more shenanigans. Norris got caught up in the middle of a Ferrari sandwich and lost ground early on, and was in a fight with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda. By the time the Hard-tire starting Yuki was ready to box, Norris had used the best of his 40-lap mediums and then… two slow wheel guns leads to a 4.1 second gap and Norris filtering out in the middle of a DRS train he couldn’t escape. 

Norris had to settle for P7 on the day, and overall, the worst McLaren weekend in terms of points since Las Vegas 2023. If you’re a Piastri fan, you’re probably a little smug knowing that Norris didn’t fully punish you for the worst weekend of the Australian’s career. Norris was quick to dismiss the missed opportunity, and I largely agree with him - When you’re confident in quali, you go first. But you’re also the guinea pig for conditions and at Baku, you’re more likely to be cautious than gamble. 

No matter how you slice it, the long run pace in FP2 was a bit of a false dawn and McLaren didn’t have enough in hand to beat Ferrari, or even Racing Bulls due to the latter’s excellent top speed, let alone Mercedes, Williams and Red Bull. A +6 gain to bring the gap down to 25 is still a good weekend for Norris, but there'll always be questions asked about whether more was in play.

Further up the field, a big day for Mercedes. George Russell sounded like he gargled gravel for breakfast on Friday and was genuinely ill. According to the man himself, it was touch and go whether he was able to even drive on Friday and the possibility of Valtteri Bottas subbing in. But he knuckled down, drove hard and finished a comfortable second via an undercut. Another feather in the cap for his Driver of the Year credentials. Great to see teammate Kimi Antonelli in fourth as well, a much needed boost of confidence for the teenager, even if he brushed the wall a few too many times for comfort. 

And of course, Carlos Sainz, Williams had been the midfield team most likely to get a shock podium with their form this season, and Sainz was exceptional. As said, there was no real shenanigans, and the only people who beat him were two of the world’s best in stronger machinery. And in a season where his teammate Alex Albon has taken many of the plaudits for multiple Top 5 finishes, its Sainz cool head that prevailed and took the headline result. With it, Sainz leaps SIX spots in the Drivers Standings to 12th as the midfield barfight continues.

But at the front, it never really looked in doubt. With Red Bull making a genuine high-speed breakthrough in Monza last time out, Max was going to be in play at a street track with many of the Italian tracks characteristics, and he dominated the race to win by 14 seconds, and take his sixth career Grand Slam (Winning from pole, fastest lap, leading every lap). That ties him with Lewis Hamilton for second on the all-time list behind Jim Clark, and takes one of the Scots records: Max is the first man to score a Grand Slam victory in five consecutive seasons. 

With it, Max sits 69 points behind Oscar Piastri with seven races and three sprints still to come. Many teased the possibility of a late title run. I get it, for me, and I’m sure for many more, he’s the best driver in the world. And no TEAM, let alone driver has scored more points than him since the summer break2. But he needs this car to be good at a greater spread of tracks. Singapore will be a big test in a fortnight’s time given it’s a far more technical circuit without the top speed compromises you need to make - No Monza rear wing this time. If Max can win there too, I’ll entertain a dialogue, but it remains a long shot.

By the maths, it’s out of Max’s hands and he needs help. Even if Max runs the table and takes all seven wins and sprints, if Piastri followed him home, he’d be 17 points short. If Piastri’s third across the board, Max wins the title by 7. That’s how small a margin for error we’re talking, and that would need Max to win 10 in a row, something even he’s only done once. I’ll start believing in a five-peat for Max when Stephanie Vaquer3 takes me out to dinner.

Hardly a classic by any means, but one where a lot of stories rose to the surface. 

The Lightning Round

Ferrari’s weekend. More false hope in Lewis Hamilton leading a practice session before a Q2 elimination and another weekend where the team are midfielders. Charles Leclerc suffered a power-unit issues he had to nurse for the opening laps, and then the team was too late in calling for a strategy switchback and Hamilton beat Leclerc over the line. To all those Hamilton lovers that rinsed Sebastian Vettel a decade or so ago, are you getting this now?!

I’ll give Carlos this too, the story of using a three year old fan’s Unicorn sticker on his helmet via the Williams podcast and then getting a podium on the first attempt was lovely stuff.

PS: Carlos Sainz becomes the 9th different podium sitter on the grid through 17 races this season. How did we get to a point where Nico Hulkenberg, Isack Hadjar and Carlos Sainz all got on the podium before Lewis did?! Shit’s wild4.

Baku gets an extension to 2030 like so many of F1’s staple rounds do. In the words of Basil Fawlty: “Just don’t mention anything about the war!”5

Alpine stone dead last on the weekend, no top speed whatsoever to speak of and now rumours that Franco Colapinto isn’t delivering the financial package his team claimed they would, and Paul Aron’s in contention for a seat for 2026.  I for one, like Paul Aron, was pretty good in a chaotic 2024 F2 season, but don’t tell the hardcore junior watchers on Twitter, they’ll petrol bomb my house. I don’t think Colapinto has been so bad they have to cut him after a year, but if the cheques aren’t clearing.

On the subject, Christian Horner WhatsApp breaker Erik van Haren at the Dutch Telegraff has reported that Yuki Tsunoda is out at Red Bull at the end of the year and that Isack Hadjar is being promoted for 2026. While I understand the switch to an extent - Hadjar has been very good as a rookie, and Yuki hasn’t improved his situation much at Red Bull in 2025, how much more talent are you going to feed into Max’s incinerator before we realise talent isn’t the issue?

Dre’s Race Review: 3/10 (Poor) - Go rewatch qualifying. I never say that, but it’s more fun than this race. Next to nothing happened that was worth watching here. Is what it is. See you in Singapore.

1. Sincerely hope the Marshals that were there during the crash were removed. Because seriously, that’s completely unacceptable.

2. Max Verstappen – 68, McLaren – 64, Mercedes – 54, Williams – 31…

3. Her match with Iyo Sky last night? Fucking baller, man. Love Steph. And Iyo. And Kris Statlander.

4. How many more drivers are getting added to that cute drawing of all the podium finishers this season? Someone needs to pass around a tip jar.

5. Not that one, the other one. The other, other one. Seriously, why don’t we talk about Baku the same way we do with Saudi Arabia and Qatar?