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 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.

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.

Story originally appeared on Racer