AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX

Easily the best part of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was Free Practice 1, which created a memory I hope to cherish for the rest of my life. We only got ten minutes into the session before Charles Leclerc ran over a manhole cover, which loosened it, and then George Russell ran over it in his Williams, which sucked it up and it hit the bottom of his car, sending a terrible spurt of broken parts behind him. George wasn't hurt, though I would imagine that getting hit by a manhole cover from the underside of your car would not be pleasant. But if that wasn't enough, they went to clean up the car and hoisted it onto a lift that was too tall to go under a pedestrian bridge. Not that that stopped the driver from trying, of course. That embarrassing (and loud) TWANG of the crane hitting the bridge will be a memory I treasure forever. But the icing on the cake was when the collision of the lift with the bridge caused a whole spray of hydraulic oil to rain down onto the Williams, just to add insult to injury. That pretty much sums up the season for Williams so far.

It was glorious.

All I cared about was that, by the grace of God, Charles Leclerc's Ferrari had only loosened the cover and was not the car that was hit. I am still thankful for that, despite the later events of the weekend. Because if a manhole cover had to sabotage one car, at least it was a car that, let's face it, didn't have a whole lot to lose anyway.

These deliciously absurd events in FP1 caused the session to go red flag as the marshals were deployed all over the track to check the remaining 320-something manhole covers which are all over this street track and make sure they were secure.

This is the kind of thing I always hope for in television but that you rarely see.

So at least something good came from this weekend.

There was also an action packed FP2 during which it was difficult to keep track of who was in the reserve area at any given time. Drivers were having a terrible time of keeping their tires warm (there aren't very many high speed turns at this track, so it's not an easy task to keep things in the right temperature window), which caused a ton of mayhem.

Quali was probably the peak on the weekend's stress graph. It was also twice as long as any other quali session I've ever seen for F1. It was mainly because Robert Kubica smashed into the single most dangerous turn in the F1 calendar, a turn which I personally don't believe should be a part of this track.

Anyways, they had to red flag the whole thing to clean up the turn. But at the end of Q2, Charles Leclerc had an extremely sad incident where he hit the same turn in a small mistake and ended up bruising up the Ferrari pretty badly. Okay, so it was pretty damaged. But he was broken up about it and was radioing in just repeating, "I am so stupid." It was extremely painful to watch, but I have every confidence in his career and in him as a person.

Ah, the glory and the pain of F1.

And then there was the race itself.

I watched the entire race from start to finish and it quickly became clear that absolutely nothing was happening. I finished watching it two hours ago and my only memory of it is that, at one point, Daniel Ricciardo went into a reserve area and Kvyat did at the same time, but then Danny Ric backed up pretty fast into Kvyat like he didn't see him there. It was totally bizarre. This caused Daniel to retire and then, later, Kvyat.

And that's it. That's all that happened.

Oh yeah, there was a bit at the end where Hamilton was trying to charge on Bottas to grab back the lead, but it would have been in the last lap and I was absolutely not going to be on board with that idea.

In conclusion, it was one of those weird race weekends where everything was exciting except the race itself.

Honestly, I don't know if China or Azerbaijan was less exciting, race-wise. At least Azerbaijan had insaaaaaane practice sessions; China didn't have anything happen for most of the weekend.

Here are my notes from this weekend:

Free Practice 1

- Charles has a little slide at the back end 

- George Russell was on the normal racing line and sucked up a non secured manhole cover and it went up under the car and hit the floor of his car and there’s a huge amount of damage and now we don’t know if all the other manhole covers are secured so they have to go check all the other curbs 

- AND THEN the recovery crane rammed into a bridge that it was too big to go under and now the oil from the crane boom is leaking onto Geroge's Williams which is already super broken

- Session will not be restarted 

- This probably hurt George’s butt a lot because when it hits the tub under he car there is no suspension to pad it. Serious impact

- This is hilarious, the dramaaa

- the car has done nothing wrong and now it’s missing it’s floor and covered in hydraulic oil all over the car 

- There’s like 320 manhole covers to check on this track or something 

- I hope I remember this for the rest of my life

Free Practice 2

- Bottas having a couple of spins, struggling for grip 

- Man it’s super dusty

- Ugh everyone is so close to the walls and it’s so terrifying 

- Charles sort of smacked a wall with the back of his tires but the walls are so close

- While they were showing a tiny amount of damage for Charles, they then cut over to Lance Stroll who hit the wall at turn 2 and it was totally a driver error and it’s red flag again. The whole front left is taken off and they’ll need the whole sesh to repair it

- They brought in Stroll's car in a truck without a hydraulic lift because of the embarrassing incident with the hitting the bridge and oiling the car earlier in FP1. And then they got to the Force India garage with the smashed car and had to take it away again to get a crane because they couldn’t get it into the garage, this is pure chaos

- Lance Stroll’s crash was 100% driver error and why wouldn’t it be. We’ve seen a bunch of people avoid the wall and play it safe and it was totally because the drivers knew their car better than Lance 

- It looked like Pierre hit a wall but he just went long into a corner and took it into a reserve area but didn’t hurt anything 

- Then Daniel went into the reserve area

- They showed a replay of Daniels brakes on fire when he locked up and went into the reserve area, what the heck 

- Seems like everyone is going into reserve areas because of a lack of tire warm up

- Grosjean went off into the reserve area 

- Lando into reserve area 

- Kvyat lost the rear and went into the wall and then his front left was on fire and the rear left was flat, now it’s red flag 

- Lance sitting on a chair in back of garage looking sad

- Giovinazzi went into reserve area

- Grosjean in reserve area 

- Max having downshift problems 

- Gasly into reserve area, went off twice in 2 laps and went off where Grosjean was already off and reversing 

- this was yellow flag central

Free Practice 3

- Gasly missed a weight bridge order in one of the earlier sessions and pitted without stopping to be weighed and now he might face a penalty or even have to start from the pit lane 

- apparently there was some drama between KMags and Ham at the end of FP2 where Kmags swipes Ham as a warning not to move over but it wasn’t in the recording I watched

- Ferrari looks worried in the garage for Seb’s rear left side. 

- Ok now we know that Pierre is starting from the pit lane on race day, but why is he running last in FP3? 

Quali

- Hahahah Stroll brushed the wall pretty bad in Q1

- Daniel big lockup in Q1 

- Gasly put in a good lap in Q1 and got fastest even though he will start in the pit lane during the race but they have him in to try to get to Q3 so he can give max a toe maybe

- In the last part of Q1, Robert Kubica had a hard hit into the wall in the tightest part of the track near the castle and it went red flag 

- Eliminated from Q1: Stroll, Grosjean, Hulk, Russell and Kubica 

- 15 min delay between q1 and q2 so they can clean up the Kubica crash

- Lance Stroll was apparently out in q1 for a “fogged up visor” oh my gosh

- NOOOOO Charles Leclerc crashed into the castle turn and out of q2

- Red flag to clean it up again 

- Pierre is not going to be in Q3 anymore, they decided not to run him cause he can’t help Max in Q3

- Kvyat clipped the wall with the back right at the end of Q2

- The interview with Charles between Q2 and Q3 tore my heart out and stomped on it 

- Paul Di Resta said Charles' interview was one of the most honest interviews with a driver he’s seen in a long time

- In Q3, Bottas stole pole at the last minute YES 

- In the end it was Bottas on pole, Ham 2nd and Seb 3rd 

Pre-Race 

- they left the scratches on Charles car and I’m scared 

- this was not a very eventful pre-race and Martin Brundle wasn't there

Race

- Bottas held first after first lap

- Max passed by Perez for 4th and now Max is in 5th

- Charles moved back to 10th from 8th, but has started passing early so he passed Daniel and is lining up the McLaren next 

- Max passed Perez so he's back in 4th

- Charles is working his way up the field 

- Quite a lot of dust on this track still 

(like 4 hours later)

- it’s lap 29/51 and pretty much nothing has happened yet ???

- Everyone is shocked there are no retirements or crashes yet as of lap 29

- Daniel retires after going too far into a reserve area and almost hitting Kvyat and then hit Kvyat WHEN BACKING UP

- Kvyat retires too now. I wonder if they'll penalize Daniel for that at the next race somehow?

- They finally pitted Charles and they let him it behind Gasly when he left the pits and now GASLY IS IN THE WAY and GASLY THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO DECIDE TO RACE

- There’s balloons on the track, finally something happened 

- Gasly retires from loss of power and now there’s a virtual safety car 

- Grosjean retires for no discernible reason, oh jk Grosjean didn’t retire, he just pitted long for the safety car 

- Ferrari’s strategy was to wait til the end of the race and put Charles on the soft tires but the soft tires are not reacting well and he’s slow and honestly, I said this at the beginning of the race, but whenever they go hard tire at beginning and soft tire at the end, I've literally never seen that work out as they plan. It just doesn't work

- They pitted Charles for a second time on lap 48/51 to try to get the point for fastest lap - Hamilton was trying to steal the lead from Bottas on the last minute but to no avail

- Bottas wins, Hamilton 2nd, Vettel 3rd 

- Charles got fastest lap  - well this sucked