Christian Horner described plans to run Formula 1’s first sprint round of the season at Azerbaijan as “ludicrous”, and most immediately understood why.
The Baku City Circuit has a reputation for chaotic and damage-stricken races, and many a team has been left to rue a high repair bill come Monday morning. Running a second race was surely asking for trouble.
But there was a logic to picking Azerbaijan for the sprint. First, it’s one of the few street tracks where overtaking is usually fairly easy. Second, its history of generating unpredictable results should have been a natural fit for a format that increases the number of competitive sessions in exchange for less practice.
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It felt like we were due for an interesting weekend after the two qualifying sessions too, with Charles Leclerc breaking the Red Bull Racing deadlock with a pair of poles in what’s been a so far uncompetitive Ferrari.
Yet what we got at the weekend was a far cry from expectations.
“Today was not a thriller,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted on Sunday night. “Just no overtaking — even with a big pace difference made it not great entertainment.
“At the end it all comes down to racing. It needs the tough battles … and today there was none of that.
“Even if you are within 0.2 seconds it is nearly impossible to overtake unless the other driver makes a mistake.
“We really need to look at it how we can avoid a boring race.”
Usually even dull sprints — of which we’ve already had a few — have tended to at least produce interesting races for the lack of practice, yet under the tweaked rules that meant the sprint was its own separate event, we ended up with a largely lifeless weekend.
So did the new sprint format kill the usually energetic Azerbaijan? Or is there something more at play?
FOLLOWING IS HARDER THIS YEAR — AND THE DRS WAS SHORTENED
Formula 1 has long had problems with following as close quarters. The more downforce a car generates, the more disturbed air it spits out at the cars behind it, which disrupts aerodynamic performance and makes it more difficult to give chase.
Last year’s all-new regulations directly targeted this effect, and drivers were unanimous in their feeling that following had improved markedly. The sport seemed like it was on the right track.
But we’re now 12 months into the rules, which means there’s another 12 months of downforce on the cars. McLaren boss Andrea Stella has also said that teams have found far more scope in these technical regulations to be inventive that expected. That can also be read as there being more room for designers to undercut the intention of the rules, creating cars that are more aerodynamically disruptive than intended.
Certainly the drivers have felt a difference this year.
“I think the overtaking is harder this year than it was last year,” George Russell said. “I think as the cars have evolved away from the initial regulations that F1 introduced, overtaking has become more difficult.”
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To make matters worse, particularly at the weekend, the sport has been reducing DRS zones in some instances in accordance with last year’s improved results.
“The drivers have had zero input on [that],” Russell said. “I’ve been a little bit disappointed again that we weren’t in that loop — I’m not even sure the FIA are aware that we feel that overtaking is harder, yet they’re basing the DRS off historic information.
“It’s going to make it challenging to overtake.”
That was always likely to have an effect in Baku despite the massive front straight that facilitates DRS usage as well as a natural slipstream — though the draft effect is reduced under these rules.
That tight middle sector splits up the cars, and the run down the hill comprises a couple of very fast corners that are downforce sensitive. Drivers were often left with a large gap to close down the straight — too large this weekend.
THE SAFETY CAR KILLED STRATEGY
The Azerbaijan was tipped to be a one-stop race, and while most drivers started on the same tyre compound, the safety car killed what variation might’ve been in store by essentially forcing drivers to pit in the same window.
It was slightly earlier than ideal for most — though some drivers, like Max Verstappen, had already made their stops — which meant that the rest of the grand prix required tyre management to guarantee the flag could be reached without a costly second stop.
In particular we missed out on what could have been an interesting strategic battle between Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton made his stop before the safety car, which resulted in him getting stuck behind the off-pace Carlos Sainz after the resumption, while Leclerc and Alonso both stopped during the caution, neutralising their fight.
We also missed out on a potential pass for the lead, with Pérez getting promoted into first place by the safety car’s timing rather than having to find a way past his teammate on the track — something it looked like he had the pace to do in the first stint.
It’s exactly the same thing we saw in Australia, where an early red flag gave almost everyone a free first stop and forced everyone to conserve their way to the finish, which produced very little hard racing after the resumption.
UNPREDICTABILITY ISN’T ALWAYS A GOOD THING
Here’s where the sprint format may have had an effect.
Reducing practice time in Formula 1 is generally a positive for the spectacle. By giving teams less time to hone their cars and simulate strategy, there are more unknowns by the time the race rolls around. The competitive order can be shaken up a bit and real-time decision-making becomes more important.
Having just one hour of practice time on Friday — or closer to 45 minutes considering the red flag — should’ve resulted in a great grand prix.
But this weekend may have provided us with an argument to the contrary.
Alpine and Haas got their set-ups so badly wrong on Friday that they took their cars out of parc fermé conditions to change them, accepting starting from the pit lane for Esteban Ocon and Nico Hülkenberg would be more competitive than starting on the grid. It’s such a rare occurrence that it’s hard say it’s just a coincidence.
On a closer grid that might be a good thing, shaking up the order enough that the starting order is unfamiliar.
But sometimes it just leads to boring racing.
“This weekend the unpredictability was maybe not good for the show,” Wolff said. “But other times it will throw in more randomness and unpredictability.
“We had it in a sub-optimum set-up decision during FP1 and the moment we realised it was too late and the car went in to parc fermé.
“It’s the same for everyone — everyone is rolling the dice and who got it right, got it right.”
Drivers who aren’t comfortably in their cars and teams that aren’t confident in their set-up will play it safe in the race, which almost never generates a good spectacle.
But there’s also a bigger-picture element to it. The lack of racing in the midfield is emphasised by the lack of action at the front, where Red Bull Racing has an almost embarrassing pace advantage over everyone else.
“There are two Red Bulls, then there are six cars and then a long way off is a third division. That’s been the pattern for the first three races and we need to shake that up somehow,” Wolff said.
This is therefore a problem with the bigger picture and not really down to the format at all.
Perez claims Sprint race in Azerbaijan! | 02:06
THE RACE WAS OVERHYPED
Finally, it’s important to consider that the race venue itself maybe isn’t quite as good as well seem to think it is.
There’s no doubt Azerbaijan has produced some real highlight grands prix, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking most of them were races of pure skill and strategy.
Most of the time it’s been drivers crashing into things and creating safety cars and red flags that shakes up the order and generates memorable results. The constant disruptions keep the pack together rather than allowing the race to develop naturally.
Daniel Ricciardo’s 2017 win was a great example. Ricciardo started 10th and dropped down to 15th with brake problems in the early stages before a safety car and a red flag reset the race and gave him a chance to seize victory with some of his trademark energetic overtakes, including a triple pass into the first turn.
Without those carnage-prompted disruptions, however, the racing tends to look much like it does at other circuits.
That’s not to say it’s a bad track; it’s just not as far from the average as has been sold.
“If you have a look over the last [eight] years, Baku is really up and down,” Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur said. “Very often we are in a train of DRS, and if the first car in the train has a huge top speed, then you can do 200 laps like this and you will never have someone able to overtake.
“Sometimes it’s like this, but also in Bahrain and Baku we’ve had really exciting races in the past. It doesn’t have anything to do with the format, I don’t think.”
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There are some conclusions we can draw from the underwhelming Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The first is that the regulations probably need more maintenance. Formula 1 and the FIA have said they’d be prepared to tweak the rules progressively if teams are creating cars counter to the intention to make racing closer. That appears to be the case this year, albeit we’re still early in the season.
The second is that we’re not even close to being past the usefulness of the DRS zones. The power of the system varies from race to race; maybe testing its effectiveness on Friday in collaboration with the drivers and varying the lengths for Saturday would give the sport a chance to arrive at the right settings consistently.
Third is that a segmented field will sometimes produce uninspiring races. That’s no surprise, and closing the gaps between the teams is the purpose of the cost cap and development restrictions, albeit it’ll take several years for their effects to be felt.
But the biggest takeaway is that sometimes F1 races don’t live up to their potential. Sometimes random elements like safety cars kill the racing. Sometimes teams and drivers are too competitive at some venues and eliminate the competition.
Not every football game is a thriller. Not every cricket match is decided in the final over. And not every grand prix has to be a classic.
That’s not an excuse to get complacent about the lack of action, but it’s not an excuse for panic either.
