When the sport first came to Baku in 2016 – the race was known as the European Grand Prix that year – the closed off streets and the noise of the cars was greeted with polite puzzlement by the locals, who showed little interest in what was happening on track on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Fast forward to last weekend and there’s a much bigger buzz, even if the crowd figures are still relatively modest. But the local fans seem to know their stuff now, showing enthusiastic support for their favourite driver or team. Depending on your point of view, Azerbaijan is either at the eastern extremity of Europe or on the western edge of Asia and the track itself shares that split personality with its wide-enough-for-four-cars-abreast main straight contrasting with the bottleneck flick under the castle walls of the old city. Those walls are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, repaired and restored to such an extent that you could be forgiven for thinking you were in some sort of medieval theme park. Put all that together and you have a street circuit that always provides exciting racing, particularly so yesterday, with four cars genuinely in with a shot at the win in the closing stages.
Formula 1 moves at such a pace that past performance at a track counts for little, but nevertheless, the fact that Yuki had always qualified in the top ten in Baku and that Daniel actually won in 2017, driving for our friends at Red Bull Racing, was a positive omen going into the weekend.
Friday practice was busy for us because, apart from all the usual set-up work on the VCARB 01, the new floor originally meant to make its debut here, but actually tried on Yuki’s car a fortnight ahead of schedule in Monza, was now available to both drivers. Only Daniel ran it in the first session, so we could do a back-to-back comparison with the original one and then they both used it for the rest of the weekend, pleased with the performance gains it brought.
Yet again, qualifying proved frustrating, with the top ten just out of reach, although penalties for others saw Yuki line up 11th on the starting grid on Sunday with Daniel 14th. For the second time in two races, Yuki’s afternoon was cut short right from the start through no fault of his own, involved in a collision, this time with Lance Stroll, the Canadian deciding he wanted to occupy the same piece of race track as our driver, when there really was no need. The car was badly damaged and on lap 14, the team called him in to retire. Daniel was one of only a handful of drivers to start on the Hard compound tyre, which actually proved to be the most competitive, allowing him to pick off a few of those ahead of him on the Medium. However, he then began to suffer with an inexplicably high level of graining, which is what happens when the compound starts to break up leading to irregularities on the tread surface with a consequent lack of grip. After that, it was a case of bringing the car home in 13th place.
Sunday’s chequered flag signalled not only the end of the race but also the start of a nine hour dash to Singapore, where, this Friday, the cars will be back on track under the Marina Bay Circuit floodlights for the 18th round of the world championship.
