Round 8: Baku

Justin:

Well, the track and Baku certainly looked the part. A beautiful setting for an F1 race and indeed an interesting track. Castle Corner looked insane...single file only through there chaps please!

Because we had incidents in each practice session and a chaotic GP2 race, people thought the F1 race would at least have a Safety Car or two. Alas, it was not to be and what we got was actually a fairly dull race.

In a shameless effort to get more views, I shall link to more external websites in this blog. I did it for Bahrain and got around 190 views! Compared to the usual 10 or so. Ehem.

Hamilton had all the momentum coming off a storming win in Canada.

Rosberg doing what he needs to do 
He was impressive in Baku. Hamilton was quickest in every practice session. Hamilton just went for it and was nearly a second up on Rosberg in P1. Rosberg took his time to catch up, but he was within a couple of tenths by the end of P3. Has to be said that Hamilton's instinctive racing style gets him a bloody long way.

I have to say, looking back on that last line...tortoise and hare anyone?

Everyone was saying that Lewis would have beaten Nico to pole had he kept it on track. But, he didn't keep it on track. He admitted he was just not on it. The car setup was changed and he just didn't feel the car, or adjust to it.

Indeed, Toto Wolff covers this in the column of Andrew Benson on the BBC website.

So, with Hamilton in the wall in qualifying, Rosberg raced off into the distance in the race. When his one pitstop came, he was 40 seconds ahead of second place (ok second had stopped), and he ended up 17 seconds ahead of Vettel.

The way Rosberg seems to be taking each race at a time impresses me. After two Lewis wins on the spin, it would be easy for Nico to lose his cool and let the momentum of Lewis affect him. In Baku he didn't.

I felt a bit for Lewis and the engine setting nonsense. The rules are currently a bit stupid. His engineers couldn't help him, resulting in him fiddling with his steering wheel for many laps at 220mph!

I also sort of agree with Andrew Benson here. Just, you know, for more views ;-).

Colourful radio!
Kimi - we love you! How many swear word bleeps can he get into one broadcast??!! Classic.

Lewis' radio messages were amusing too.

Driver of the day
Perez. Duh!

To Austria we go.

Anyone stumbling across this thinking it's not in-depth or whatever, this particular blog edition may not be I grant you. Check out the last 6 years though people :-).