Piastri edges out Leclerc for dramatic Azerbaijan GP win amid late-race chaos

Oscar Piastri claimed victory at the end of a captivating Azerbaijan Grand Prix, narrowly beating Charles Leclerc to the chequered flag in a race-long, multi-car battle on the streets of Baku, as Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz dramatically crashed out late on.

Piastri trailed pole-sitter Leclerc in the early stages of the 51-lap encounter but overhauled him shortly after the front-runners’ sole pit stop phase, with Perez – and eventually Sainz – joining them to make it a tense, four-way scrap for honours.

It was Piastri who ultimately came out on top, having expertly defended P1 on several occasions and gained a little bit of breathing space when Leclerc’s tyres faded in the closing laps, which pushed the Ferrari into the clutches of Perez and Sainz.

Drama ensued at the start of the penultimate lap when a failed pass on Leclerc led to Perez going wheel-to-wheel with Sainz – the pair spectacularly colliding on the run between Turns 2 and 3 and ending their afternoons in the concrete wall.

While the race ended under the Virtual Safety Car, there was no stopping the celebrations for McLaren and Piastri, who reflected on “the most stressful afternoon of my life” to bag a second Grand Prix win and help McLaren move to the top of the constructors’ championship.

Behind Piastri and Leclerc, a big winner from the clash between Perez and Sainz was George Russell, who took an unlikely podium in his Mercedes, while Lando Norris – on an alternative strategy from P15 – passed title rival Max Verstappen for P4 late in the race.

Fernando Alonso had a lonely afternoon in his Aston Martin, being promoted to sixth position with the drama ahead, while Alex Albon and Franco Colapinto built on Williams’s strong qualifying display to score a valuable haul of points for the Grove-based outfit.

Lewis Hamilton made it a double points finish for Mercedes after his engine-related back-of-the-grid start, with the final reward of the day going to Haas stand-in Ollie Bearman, who impressively finished just ahead of experienced team mate Nico Hulkenberg.

Pierre Gasly also rose from the rear of the field to take 12th, having been disqualified from qualifying, followed by RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, Kick Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu and Alpine team mate Esteban Ocon – the latter two recovering from power unit penalties.

Valtteri Bottas was the final finisher in the other Sauber, with Perez and Sainz ending the race on the sidelines alongside Lance Stroll and Yuki Tsunoda, who clashed on the opening lap to leave the former with a puncture and the latter with car damage.

AS IT HAPPENED

After three practice sessions full of incidents and drama, there was more to come in qualifying when Norris suffered a shock Q1 exit and missed out on the chance to battle for pole, which ultimately went Leclerc’s way as the Ferrari man extended his incredible Baku run.

A couple of penalties would move Norris from P17 to P15, though, with 13th-placed Gasly being disqualified from the session over a fuel flow breach and seventh-placed Hamilton dropping to the back via new power unit elements – something Ocon and Zhou also opted to take on.

When teams removed the tyre blankets from their cars on the grid, it was revealed that the majority of drivers would be starting on Pirelli’s yellow-marked medium compound, with Albon, Ricciardo, Norris, Zhou, Gasly and Ocon going for the white-marked hards.

As the lights went out, pole-sitter Leclerc made a clean getaway to keep his advantage over Piastri into Turn 1, while both Red Bulls were on the move as Perez got the jump on Sainz and Verstappen cleared Russell under braking for the second corner.

Behind them, Alonso, Colapinto, Albon and Bearman all held station in the tail-end of the top 10, as Norris immediately got down to business to rise to 12th by the end of the opening lap, slipping past several rivals and benefitting from an early puncture for Stroll.

Norris gained another spot at the start of Lap 3, passing Tsunoda for P11 into Turn 2, with the Japanese racer also losing out to Hulkenberg, team mate Ricciardo and fast starters Gasly and Hamilton shortly afterwards – suggesting that he was battling some kind of issue.

A potential answer came when start replays showed Stroll attempting a move on Tsunoda into Turn 4, tagging the right-rear of the RB and picking up a puncture. “He closed the door on me,” the Canadian reported over the radio at the time, as he limped back to the pits.

Back at the front, Leclerc was not having it all his own way despite that strong start, with Piastri managing to sit inside the magic one-second Drag Reduction System window when the overtaking aid was activated and apply some pressure down the lengthy main straight.

“How are the tyres?” Norris was asked at this point, as he edged closer to 10th-placed Bearman. ”Yeah, they feel alright at the minute,” came the response from the Briton, who would be looking to go longer than the medium-shod cars ahead of him.

On Lap 8, Norris made it into the points-paying positions with a clean move on Bearman into the Turn 1 braking zone, and the Haas stand-in – who had just come perilously close to the barriers at Turn 15 – soon dropped back toward team mate Hulkenberg.

After a period spent looking in his mirrors, Leclerc stepped it up a gear and crucially broke the DRS window back to Piastri, going on to build up a lead of some 2.5 seconds by the time the lap chart hit double figures – the McLaren man being told to work toward “Plan B”.

There were dramas elsewhere, with sixth-placed Russell reporting that “I think a plastic bag just went into the left-hand airbox” and fifth-placed Verstappen lamenting that “I have zero bite in the car”, while Hulkenberg made a move on Bearman into Turn 1 for 10th.

With questions over whether some drivers might go for a two-stop strategy, Colapinto was the first man inside the top 10 places to pit for fresh tyres, swapping from mediums to hards, which prompted Alonso to do the same next time around to defend against the undercut.

Amid their respective bag and balance concerns, Russell and Verstappen followed suit on Lap 13, along with Perez one tour after that, but Leclerc, Piastri, Sainz, Albon and Norris continued – the latter two drivers running those starting sets of hards rather than mediums.

Perez lit up the timesheets on his fresh tyres to swiftly catch the yet-to-stop Norris, who was then asked by the McLaren pit wall if he could hold up the Red Bull driver in the middle sector. This helped out team mate Piastri, who rejoined the track just ahead of Perez when he pitted.

Next to pit were race leader Leclerc on Lap 17 and Sainz a tour later, while Tsunoda stopped to retire amid apparent damage and Piastri and Perez both passed Albon – who, like Norris, was still stretching out his first stint – to move back into P2 and P3 respectively.

Leclerc’s lead was much smaller after those stops, however, with Piastri getting into the DRS window for the start/finish straight and brilliantly diving up the inside of the Ferrari into Turn 1 at the start of Lap 20, while Perez watched on and was ready to pounce.

“They are pushing like crazy, or they have more grip than us,” said Leclerc, as he sat in a McLaren/Red Bull sandwich, while Norris reported that “I’m struggling a little bit” as he and Albon edged towards the halfway mark on their original hard tyres.

TV cameras then cut from one set of battling McLaren and Ferrari cars to another as Sainz overtook Norris for P5 into Turn 1 on Lap 23, before the Spaniard set his sights on fourth-placed Albon and completed a similar move on the Williams one tour later.

After Sainz’s pass, Norris was doing just enough to keep Verstappen at bay, with the latter commenting over the radio that “my brakes are not working” via a moment trying to stop his car at Turn 15, and Russell held P8 over Alonso and Colapinto.

Haas pair Hulkenberg and Bearman were now running just outside the points in P11 and P13 respectively, split by Gasly, while Hamilton sat 14th from Ricciardo, Zhou, Ocon and Bottas, and the recovering Stroll brought up the rear following Tsunoda’s retirement.

As the leaders headed down the main straight to start Lap 29, Leclerc found himself a few car lengths closer to Piastri and had a sniff at an overtake on the approach to Turn 1, only for the McLaren driver to defend robustly and hold onto his advantage.

Perez, meanwhile, was starting to fall back slightly in third, with Sainz now a distant fourth, as Albon and Norris continued to back up Verstappen and in turn Russell – the wait going on to find out when the Williams and McLaren drivers would dive into the pits for fresh tyres.

Albon answered half of that question when he swapped from hards to mediums on Lap 32, coinciding with a DRS-assisted move from Russell on Verstappen into Turn 1, and a radio call to Norris that told the championship contender “this is our time”.

A lap later, Leclerc had another look at Piastri into Turn 1, with a compromised exit forcing the race leader into defensive action on the run to Turn 2, and the squabbling between the pair allowing Perez to close back in and make it a three-way fight again.

Verstappen and Russell then went wheel-to-wheel for the second time in the space of a few laps, the latter doing enough to keep P6 over the reigning world champion, who took to the radio to explain just how difficult it was to drive his Red Bull.

“Come on! Keep it up,” was the message to Leclerc with some 15 laps remaining, having held a wild slide coming out of Turn 16, as Hulkenberg cleared Colapinto for ninth position and Albon – on his much fresher medium tyres – also breezed past his team mate.

Norris finally pitted for new tyres on Lap 38, dropping him back to seventh position, behind Russell and Verstappen, with Albon continuing his charge and sparking another change to the top 10 places when he passed Hulkenberg into the first corner.

“Piastri starts to struggle,” said Leclerc over the radio as the race entered its closing stages, bringing another overtaking attempt into Turn 1 on Lap 41 – but the leader put his car in all the right places once more and kept P1.

Unaware of what was to come, Red Bull told Perez that “it’s going to get messy” in the final few laps due to traffic ahead, as the scrapping between the top three drivers – and time lost – led to the front-running group being joined by the other Ferrari of Sainz.

Leclerc’s bid to overhaul Piastri would come unstuck when he reported that he had “no rear tyres at all” on Lap 48, enabling the leader to edge away by a couple of seconds, and the P2 man instead came under pressure from Perez and team mate Sainz.

After Stroll pitted to retire his Aston Martin amid apparent technical trouble and Norris passed championship rival Verstappen into Turn 1 with a couple of laps to run, chaos ensued when Leclerc, Perez and Sainz battled it out.

Attempting to go around the outside of Leclerc at the first corner, Perez was forced wide at the exit and found himself in a fight with Sainz at Turn 2, after which the Red Bull and Ferrari went side-by-side as they raced to reach Turn 3 first.

But neither of them would get there, with Sainz and Perez’s paths converging and the two cars being sent violently into the concrete wall, littering debris all over the track and forcing Race Control to end the encounter under the Virtual Safety Car.

Perez was fuming after the incident, questioning whether his rival is “crazy”, while Sainz shared a bemused radio message of his own. Both drivers will be visiting the stewards, with the panel confirming a post-race investigation.

Piastri had a chance to breathe as he saw out the final lap under caution and sealed the win over Leclerc, while Russell benefitted from Perez and Sainz banging wheels to claim the final spot on the podium and give Mercedes something to cheer about.

Norris took a few more points away from Verstappen as the title contenders came home P4 and P5 respectively, the McLaren man also earning the fastest lap bonus, with Alonso following in sixth from Williams pair Albon and Colapinto.

Hamilton was ninth, followed by final points scorer Bearman, who completed a late, unseen pass on Hulkenberg. Gasly, Ricciardo and Zhou were the final drivers to finish on the lead lap, and Ocon and Bottas were the final drivers to cross the line.

Perez and Sainz clambered out of their cars and pondered what might have been, with that stewards’ investigation to follow, joining Stroll and Tsunoda – who rued the consequences of their own early collision – in retirement.

Key quote

“I tried at the start of the race to get in front but once I dropped out of DRS [range to Leclerc] I just didn’t have the pace,” said winner Piastri. “After the stop, I saw we were pretty close again and I felt like we had a little bit of extra grip. I had to go for it because I knew that if I didn’t get past at the start of the stint, I was never going to get past.

“I went for a pretty big lunge but managed to pull it off and then hang on for dear life for the next 35 laps. 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 so it was hard work. It definitely goes down as one of the better races of my career.”

What’s next

The next stop on the 2024 F1 calendar will be the Singapore Grand Prix, with the paddock travelling straight to Marina Bay for the second round of this double header on September 20-22. Head to the RACE HUB to find out how you can follow the action.