Baku: Greatest F1 Race in the Morden Era?

What. A. Race. For the longest time, F1 has been bogged down in races that have relied on predetermined strategies and undertaking with pit stops to get the wins, this weekend’s Baku race, however, saw the brave and bold rewarded, and the aggressive punished.

This race had everything an F1 fan could ever hope for from a race. Crashes, heated wheel to wheel action and a podium full of winners who actually looked happy.

After a few laps of what had been a fairly standard beginning to an F1 race of the recent years, with the pole sitter, this time being Lewis Hamilton, running off with the lead and the prospects of another dull race settling in, Redbull’s Max Verstappen had yet another engine failure, and has now only finished half of this year’s races.

This forced the first safety car of the race, and with tire heat low the restart resulted in more carnage, with the two Force India team mates colliding and taking out a Ferrari car at the same time. All three managed to limp back to the pits, but as a result of this collision, the race was red flagged.

At the restart, more madness ensued. 1st place Lewis Hamilton was hot on the brakes, going into turn 16, which resulted in an unprepared Vettel colliding with the back of the British driver’s car. Many have been quick to defend Lewis to be backing the pack up to prepare them for the restart, and allow the safety car to get out of the way, but it was also a way of force Vettel to back off of the Brit, to gain an advantage at the restart.

Clearly flustered with the situation Vettel pulled alongside Hamilton to show his frustration and the two cars collided once more. The result? A 10 second time penalty for Vettel and nothing for Hamilton. Although Karma kicked in later in the race when the Brits head rest came loose, forcing him to pit to get it fixed.

For the last two years F1 fans have been blessed with the awkward, once friends now rivals duel between former Mercedes team mates Lewis Hamilton and the now retired Nico Rosberg, that at times saw both drivers crashing out of races due to Hamilton’s very aggressive driving style and saw the pair clashing over and over again, even as far as to throwing hats at each other after one very heated race.

Lewis has now found a new rival in Farrari’s Sebatstian Vettel, 4-time world champion winner and the current leader of the this year’s championship. In the past, these two drivers have been seen to have had a very friendly rivalry, and both have stated how much they respect one and other prior to this weekend also. Yet this weekend the gloves were off and the first punches of what will certainly see the two remain very frosty for the rest of the year, have been thrown.

Vettel for me has been vilified here, while yes he should not have reacted so hot-headed, and is edging dangerously close to a one race ban. Lewis needs to think twice when fighting with Vettel, in the same mental fashion he has previous with Rosberg, because as see this weekend, Vettel will call him on such behaviour.

In the end Redbull’s Daniel Ricardo finished 1st after a troublesome start, and in only his 8th start in Formula 1 Lance Stroll became the youngest driver to ever take to the podium after he finished 3rd, after just being caught at the finish line by Mercedes driver Valtteri  Bottas, who took home 2^nd.

Overall this race delivered after so many have often just been glorified parades.

Driver of the race was no doubt the rooky Lance Stroll. But I am left feeling sorry of Max Verstappen, and intrigued where this years championship battle will end up in the hands of.

***** star race from me (out of a possible 5!)

The Baku street circuit allowed for nerve-racking, watching through your fingers racing that F1 has been lacking in recent years. Hopefully the tension and drama this race provided will spill over into the next race in Austria in two weeks.