Oscar Piastri Wins F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix that Features Huge Crash

Oscar Piastri was rewarded for a brilliant drive with victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix—the second win of his career—enabling McLaren to snatch the lead of the Constructors’ Championship on another bad weekend for Red Bull Racing. Lando Norris also took a few points out of Max Verstappen’s leads in the Drivers' Championship.

Here's what we learned in Baku:

Super Oscar Comes Up Big in Baku

Papaya rules? Papaya ruled in Baku, courtesy of a superb performance from sophomore Piastri, who is swiftly establishing himself as one of Formula 1’s front-runners. After all the talk in the build-up to the weekend of the potential team instructions at McLaren it was Piastri who seized the initiative and highlighted his credentials.

Piastri trailed pole sitter Charles Leclerc through the first stint on Medium tires, and faced pressure from a rejuvenated Checo Perez, but came alive after switching to Hard tires. Having kept Perez at bay through the pit stop phase, aided by out-of-sequence teammate Lando Norris briefly slowing the Red Bull driver, Piastri latched onto the back of leader Leclerc.

Ferrari perhaps pitted Leclerc one lap too late, leaving him vulnerable, while a sub-par in-lap and out-lap also contributed to Piastri’s surge. Yet it still required a special move to dispatch Leclerc and that’s what Piastri executed; on Lap 20 of 51 Piastri lunged from distance into Turn 1 but managed to stop the car, without a lock-up, and made the corner.

“There was a 50-50 chance I made the corner,” quipped a typically nonchalant Piastri post-race.

Piastri still faced pressure from Leclerc’s looming Ferrari for the bulk of the remainder of the race, as they lapped within a second of each other, and regularly had to defend the line into Turn 1. But the McLaren youngster kept his cool.

Leclerc’s tires cried their last during the final few laps, freeing Piastri to cruise to victory, one which enabled McLaren to take the lead of the Constructors’ Championship for the first time since 2014.

“That was probably the most stressful afternoon of my life,” said Piastri, in a tone that did not match his words.

“I was very happy with this afternoon, that definitely goes down as one of the best races of my career I think. After the first stint I thought we’d be second at absolute best, but saw we managed to gain time after the pit stop; I knew when I was in DRS on that one lap I knew I had to try everything to make it stick because if I didn’t I definitely wouldn’t win the race.”

Leclerc, who has now scored four successive poles at Baku without converting them into a win, had to settle for second best, recognizing Piastri and McLaren executed the small details in a stronger fashion.

“We lost the victory based on two factors today,” Leclerc said. “The first was tire management on our out-lap from the pits. We expected it to take a long time for everyone to warm up their tires, which was the case for our car, but not at all for McLaren, who got their tires up to temperature immediately and gained a big amount of time there.

"The second was not fighting Oscar harder when he overtook. I knew we had a long race ahead and my target was to look after my tires, stay within DRS range and overtake him later down the line. However, we underestimated the speed they had on the straights today, running a lower downforce package than us, which made them too fast to attempt to overtake them.”

Dreadful Day for Red Bull

Max Verstappen had one of his least competitive displays for some time as the reigning World Champion was only seventh-best, in a race in which he complained about the RB20, and trailed win contending team-mate Checo Perez by some margin.

Having started nine places ahead of nearest title rival Lando Norris the fact he finished behind him compounded a bad day at the office – though that Verstappen was fifth, rather than seventh, was due to a dismal outcome for the other side of the Red Bull garage.

In trying to grab second from Leclerc in the closing stages Perez left himself vulnerable to a fast-charging Carlos Sainz, who moved ahead out of Turn 1, and the two tangled in clumsy fashion as they accelerated out of Turn 3.

It was a deeply disappointing conclusion to what had been Perez’s strongest drive of the campaign—outclassing Verstappen on merit for the first time in over a year at a circuit where he thrives—and it was costly in the context of the Constructors’ fight; McLaren was set to move a couple of points ahead of Red Bull but the gap is now, already, 20 points.

Verstappen still holds a 59-point advantage in the Drivers’ Championship, and it could have been worse, given Norris had to recover from 15th on the grid after unfortunate timing of a yellow flag combined with a mistake left him out in Q1.

But, given where Perez was able to put the RB20 through the weekend, it was an off-color display from a champion who usually finds the car’s ceiling.

The catalyst were set-up changes that Verstappen and Red Bull made prior to qualifying, which he feels “tipped it over the edge” and meant he “paid the price for that in the race.”

Nearest rival Norris was content with grabbing back a handful of points.

“I’m happy, yeah I could be happier if there wasn’t a yellow flag yesterday [in qualifying], but happy for myself and for Oscar, another win for him is amazing,” Norris said. “A win and a fourth from where we started is not what we expected today, outscored Red bull, a very strong race, the car was amazing today and that gives us a lot of confidence going into the next few races.”

Colapinto Justifies Williams’ Bold Move

In just his second race start with Williams in Formula 1 Franco Colapinto has already managed a higher race finish than Logan Sargeant achieved in his 18-month spell.

It was a bold move to promote Colapinto into a Formula 1 race seat, even accounting for Sargeant’s struggles, but the Argentine has already rewarded Williams’ faith in the form of points. Colapinto kept his nose clean in the race, managing his one-stop strategy well, to collect eighth position. It cemented a strong day for Williams, with more experienced teammate Alex Albon running the alternative strategy to score seventh, as the recently upgraded FW46 was firmly in the midfield pack in Baku.

The result enabled Williams to move ahead of Alpine in the battle for eighth in the standings, capping a miserable weekend for the French outfit, as unreliability was married with a lack of performance.

“It is very special, a dream come true,” said Colapinto, who became the first Argentinian driver to score points since 1982. “I’m really happy, very proud of the team, what we achieved together is incredible, I am delighted, it’s been a lot of effort and we already climb one position in the championship and we scored a lot of points. They deserve it so let’s keep going this way.”

Prowling Bearman Gets Point for Haas

Ollie Bearman stepped into the Haas for the weekend in place of the suspended Kevin Magnussen and got a little bit of a head start on his 2025 duties.

Bearman just missed out on a spot in Q3 though was promoted into the top 10 when Lewis Hamilton was penalized for Mercedes fitting a new engine. Bearman dropped back during the early stages of the race, overly saving the Medium tyre, and did a solid job on Hards in traffic, holding 13th position in the final laps.

That Bearman wound up inside the top 10 owed everything to the collision between Perez and Sainz. Having gained those two spots, Bearman snuck past Haas team-mate Nico Hulkenberg in the wake of the German being unintentionally caught up in the aftermath of the Perez/Sainz scene.

Explaining the situation Hulkenberg said: “With the accident at the end I got caught off guard. For me, it was a straight safety car or even red flag as there was some real carnage down the straight. It was instead then a green flag. The whole track was covered in debris, and I ran over a massive piece which I couldn’t see because of a car in front of me. It was a pretty crazy two last laps, but unfortunately not in our favor.”

Bearman was self-critical of his weaknesses despite picking up a point.

“I missed some pace in the first stint and lost a few positions there and that put me a bit behind in the race as I got some traffic and lost some time,” Bearman said. “In the second stint, I’m quite happy with the performance. It’s tough when you’re trying to overtake, you really have to push the tires and they get hot, so I was pushing hard to overtake Franco, and eventually Lewis Hamilton overtook me, so he was using his experience there to do that. I wasn’t going to finish in the points but there was some misfortune in front of me which allowed me to do so.”

Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu was nonetheless buoyed by the performance of Magnussen’s stand-in.

“Purely from Ollie’s driving, I thought it was a really good job,” Komatsu said. “Yes, he was overly managing the tire earlier, but the team should’ve done better to inform Ollie during the first stint. The pace really hindered his race but once he realized he was over-managing, he picked it up and had awareness. I think it’s brilliant to bring home P10 and a much-needed point for the team. All in all with Ollie, he had a setback in FP3, and underperformed in Q2, but overall it’s impressive.”

Results

F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

1. Oscar Piastri, McLaren, 51 laps, 1:35:58.007, 25 points

2. Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, +10.910 seconds, 18 points

3. George Russell, Mercedes, +31.328, 15 points

4. Lando Norris, McLaren, +36.143, 13 points

5. Max Verstappen, Red Bull, +1:17.098, 10 points

6. Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin, +1:25.468, 8 points

7. Alex Albon, Williams, +1:27.396, 6 points

8. Franco Colapinto, Williams, +1:29.541, 4 points

9. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, +1:32.401, 2 points

10. Oliver Bearman, Haas, +1:33.127, 1 point

11. Nico Hulkenberg, Haas, +1:33.465

12. Piere Gasly, Alpine, +1:57.189

13. Daniel Ricciardo, RB, +2:26.907

14. Zhou Guanyu, Kick Sauber, +2:28.841

15. Esteban Ocon, Alpine, +1 lap

16. Valtteri Bottas, Kick Sauber, +1 lap

17. Sergio Perez, Red Bull, DNF

18. Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari, DNF

19. Lance Stroll, Aston Martin, DNF

20. Yuki Tsunoda, RB, DNF

F1 Constructors' Championship

1. McLaren 476

2. Red Bull 456

3. Ferrari 425

4. Mercedes 309

5. Aston Martin 82

6. RB 34

7. Haas 29

8. Williams 16

9. Alpine 13

10. Kick Sauber 0

F1 Drivers' Championship

1. Max Verstappen 313

2. Lando Norris 254

3. Charles Leclerc 235

4. Oscar Piastri 222

5. Carlos Sainz 184

6. Lewis Hamilton 166

7. Sergio Perez 143

8. George Russell 128

9. Fernando Alonso 58

10. Lance Stroll 24

11. Nico Hulkenberg 22

12. Yuki Tsunoda 22

13. Alex Albon 12

14. Daniel Ricciardo 12

15. Pierre Gasly 8

16. Oliver Bearman 7

17. Kevin Magnussen 6

18. Esteban Ocon 5

19. Franco Colapinto 4

20. Zhou Guanyu 0

21. Logan Sargeant 0

22. Valtteri Bottas 0