Five things we learned from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

There’s something about Sergio Perez and street circuits that just clicks, y’know? Four of the Mexican’s five career F1 wins had come on street tracks prior to this weekend, now he’s added another inner-city victory to that list.

Fresh from surging past Charles Leclerc to win the sprint race on Saturday, Perez sailed by the Ferrari driver again on Sunday before hunting down his teammate and race leader Max Verstappen in the early stages of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

But just as it looked like we might have two Red Bulls battling for the win, the team decided to pit Verstappen… at the exact moment the safety car was deployed to retrieve Nyck de Vries’s stricken AlphaTauri.

That gave Perez a cheap stop which vaulted him into the lead, from which he never looked back on his way to the chequered flag. He’s now just six points behind Verstappen in the standings and talking up his chances of a title fight… Reckon he’s got what it takes?

There was drama late on in the race but of the entirely wrong sort as Esteban Ocon - who had started from the pit lane and ran the whole grand prix on one set of tyres - dived into the pits on the final lap to make his mandatory stop.

Except no one in the pit lane had noticed and there were dozens of people already gathering to welcome the podium finishers, seemingly unaware that the race was still going on.

The result was a terrifying near-miss in which the Alpine driver had to react quickly as people leapt out of his way. Luckily no one was hurt, and the FIA stewards were forced to summon their own personnel to find out what had gone wrong. Oops.

We went into the weekend with Charles Leclerc having to distance himself from rumours that he was in talks over a move to Mercedes - a denial he sort of managed - such is the apparent hopelessness of wanting to be world champion while also driving for Ferrari…

However, Leclerc immediately gave everyone something else to talk about by grabbing pole position out of the blue on Friday, before repeating the trick the next morning in the inaugural ‘Sprint Shootout’. Not a bad effort, that.

Inevitably the pace advantage of the Red Bull told in both the sprint and the grand prix, but Leclerc clung on for a podium in both and in doing so launched himself back up to sixth in the standings after two DNFs in three races.

Verstappen looked frustrated all weekend in Baku, first missing out on pole position in both qualifying and the sprint shootout, and then colliding with George Russell in the sprint race with nothing to show for his efforts but third place and a gaping hole in his sidepod.

The world champion then got into an angry confrontation with the Mercedes driver in the pit lane, accusing him of taking too much risk with his overtake and objecting to Russell’s excuse of having cold tyres. Many swear words were also deployed.

And when asked about the new sprint weekend format the Dutchman said F1 should “just scrap the whole thing” and not bother with “this artificial excitement”. Has he got a point?

Let’s face it, the Azerbaijan GP is only exciting when things go wrong. By which we mean ‘when drivers crash’. And that’s a bad way to turn a race into spectacle.

Fortunately there were no big accidents this year, and coupled with the decision to shorten the DRS zone on the main straight - and thus make it almost entirely ineffective - there was very little on track action. Shoutout to Lewis Hamilton for pulling some moves after the safety car and Fernando Alonso dive-bombing Carlos Sainz into Turn 4.

But having produced another forgettable grand prix, F1 duly announced over the weekend that Baku would be staying on the calendar until at least the end of 2026. At least it’s not the 10-year deal that was rumoured a little while ago. But still… yawn.