McLaren Stuns F1 World: Historic Azerbaijan Win Sees Them Leapfrog Red Bull in Championship Standings
Azerbaijan Grand Prix: McLaren Wins Championship, Surpasses Red Bull in Points
[Newyddion Tang Dynasty News, amser Beijing, Medi 16, 2024] On 15 September, local time, the Azerbaijan F1 Grand Prix was held at the Baku Circuit. Australian driver Oscar Piastri won again after the Hungarian Grand Prix and helped McLaren overtake Red Bull Racing in the constructors’ standings. Monaco Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, who started from pole position, was second. British Mercedes driver George Russell was third.
Leclerc Wins Pole Position for the Fourth Consecutive Year
The Azerbaijan F1 Grand Prix is held in a street race in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Baku has a unique landscape and culture, deeply influenced by Russian culture. It hosted the first F1 Grand Prix in 2017. Since Azerbaijan has a total population of only about 10 million people and a racing culture has not yet been formed, there has never been a crowded situation when watching F1 races here.
This track with 20 anti-clockwise corners is 6 kilometers long and is the fourth longest track on the current F1 schedule. The width of the track changes a lot. There are two very long straight roads, more than 2.2 kilometers in total. Bottas had previously driven a Williams car with Pirelli tyres, setting an unofficial F1 record with a tail speed of 378 km/h, a record that remains to this day.
In qualifying on Saturday, Ferrari driver Leclerc continued his momentum from the previous stop, beating McLaren’s Piastri by around 0.3 seconds to claim pole position in Baku for the fourth consecutive year. Another Ferrari driver, Carlos Sainz Jr., is third and will start the race from the second row with fourth-placed Mexican Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. British Mercedes driver Russell and Red Bull driver Max Verstappen were fifth and sixth respectively.
McLaren Driver Piastri Wins
After the start of the race on Sunday, Leclerc retained the leading position, Perez overtook Sainz and raced into third, and Verstappen moved into fifth. One lap later, British McLaren driver Norris, who started from 15th on the grid, rose to 12th. By lap 10, Norris had broken into the top ten.
On lap 13, Verstappen and Russell, who were in the leading group, took the lead in fitting and wearing new hard tyres. Following that, leader Leclerc decided to switch to hard tyres. Norris, who started on the hard tyre, held Perez down on the track after a tire change, giving teammate Piastri time to pit. When Piastri returned to the track, he was temporarily in fourth place, ahead of Perez.
On lap 20, on the starting line, Piastri took advantage of DRS to overtake Leclerc and become the new leader. Behind, Verstappen had been chasing Norris, who was in sixth place. The Brit ran 32 laps on a set of hard tires and was always ahead of Verstappen. It took until the 38th lap for Norris to pit and switch to medium tyres. After returning to the track, he was 15.5 seconds behind Verstappen, but the Briton, who had the tire advantage, kept the chance to catch up.
Piastri and Leclerc, who were in the lead, remained within 1 second. The gap between Perez, who is in third place, and Sainz behind him is gradually reducing at the same time, the distance between Perez and Leclerc is also getting closer. The game entered a critical moment.
With three laps left in the race, Leclerc, who came first, extended his lead to more than 2.5 seconds By this time, Piastri’s tires had started to fail and he was unable to catch up. Perez and Sainz were behind within 1 second;
On the penultimate lap, when Perez was about to overtake Leclerc, he was overtaken by Sainz and dropped to fourth place. Then the two began a fierce chase. As a result, Perez’s right front tire collided with Sainz’s left rear, and both of them hit the wall and retired from the race It can be said that both sides suffered losses. Norris completed the overtaking of Verstappen.
Piastri crossed the line first with an advantage of 10.910 seconds and won the championship again after the Hungarian station. Leclerc, who started from pole position, finished second. As Perez and Sainz both retired, Russell took the podium. The drivers between 4 and 10 with corresponding points are: Norris, Verstappen, Alonso, Albon, Colapinto, Hamilton and Bellman. Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu finished the race in 14th place.
After this station, in the driver’s positions, Verstappen continues to lead with 313 points; Norris is second with 254 points; In the team standings, McLaren has 476 points, surpassing Red Bull to take the top spot with a 20 point advantage; Ferrari is third with 425 points. Sauber is still the only team not to score points.