Despite cars that can follow much closer than recent years, and a track with two very long straights, this race was a bore!
Red Bull Racing are riding the wave of success. Most people tipped them as favorites due to the long straights and their extreme top speed advantage. The team stated the cars were set up more for the race, I think particularly with Verstappen as Perez uncharacteristic tire deg struggles suggests his setup was more focused towards quali. A bit of a shame the team didn't let them race harder, but it was the right call in the end and Verstappen was significantly faster. The WDC is still up in the air, but the WCC might be theirs to lose at this point.
Mercedes may not be the fastest car anymore, but they certainly have a handle on reliability which again proves to be beneficial as they capitalized on other's problems. George Russell again outperforming his teammate, and again scoring another podium. Lewis got himself back in the pack due to his qualifying result but really fought hard to get back to 4th place. A very strong performance by the team. Unfortunately it sounds like Mercedes are lobbying for regulation changes to fix their proposing issues. We have seen this tactic from them before and the FIA usually complies which is unfair to teams like Red Bull, who have figured it out. There is no question the drivers take a beating, but Mercedes could change the setup to be more comfortable. It's a choice. We heard Toto again apologizing to Lewis after the race which is pathetic. Russell wasn't a drama queen about it. If Lewis can't handle it, then raise his car's ride height and let Russell make a bigger gap to the 7x champ.
AlphaTauri finally got a good result. Perhaps the tracks with the long straights suit their car better. Gasly had his best performance all year and got a deserving 5th place. Tsunoda was having a very good race as well until a very strange rear wing issue forced a pitstop. The tape did hold, but it did seem risky to allow him back on track going 200 mph especially since he was out of the points anyways.
Aston Martin had a very split weekend. Vettel was on it and delivered in the race. He did have a silly off while trying to overtake, but an awesome rally style recovery to keep the time loss to a minimum. Stroll on the other hand.... lets just he is lucky his dad owns the team.
Alpine came into the season with the strategy of choosing power over reliability and on the power hungry Baku track, the car held up and gave Alonso some good points. Their tiny rear wing could not have been ideal for overall lap time, but it made it exceptionally difficult for anyone to pass them in the race. Ocon was even able to get into the points so it worked out well for them.
McLaren were the slowest on the straight but the car was pretty good. I think their strategy only hurt their drivers races, but at least a double points finish with Ricciardo pretty much matching Lando for once. Ricciardo's race was absolutely compromised by keeping him behind Lando in the first half of the race, and then Lando wasn't able to fully use his fresher tires at the end of the race while being behind Ricciardo. Daniel did deserve to finish ahead though, and the team calling asking to hold position was correct.
Alpha Romeo just outside the points. Bottas really didn't look very good this weekend, or maybe Zhou was just that impressive. His best race by far in his F1 career, unfortunately cut short by a mechanical issue.
Williams really wasn't as good as their result shows. Albon quietly gets 12th place, but was still 4th from the bottom finishers. Latifi getting a 10 second stop and go penalty for a crew member touching a car within 15 seconds of the race start is a joke and it again shows how broken F1's penalty system is. 10 second stop and go that had absolutely no influence on their race vs say a 10 second time penalty for crashing out a direct competitor while you go on to win the race. Fair? To make things worse he got another penalty for ignoring blue flags, yet neither William's drivers got penalties in Monaco. Where's the consistency?
Haas had a dreadful weekend and it might be the case where their window of good result is pretty much closed, unless they come out with a big update. That may not be possible with all the repair costs inflicted by Schumacher this year. Mick was horrible this weekend. His performance was well below Latifi's which is embarrassing.
Ferrari gave huge hope to all the Tifosi to start the season, but reality may be setting in that their fight is to just stay ahead of Mercedes and hopefully get some wins here and there. The car is still fast, but their development is well short of Red Bull, Mercedes, and even Alpine. The bigger concern is reliability. PU issues are extremely costly over the course of the season. If Ferrari have any hopes at a championship, they cannot afford DNF's. A tough day for the red team.
Driver of the Day: Lewis Hamilton. He was really the only guy to work for positions again and again. 4th place while being in obvious pain and discomfort. Good job.
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