Before we shower Max Verstappen with more praise – that kid is surely going to go far – Williams driver Carlos Sainz deserves his time in the sun after having been in the shadow of Williams team-mate Alex Albon during a tough first season for his new employer.
Sainz needed more time than expected to get up to speed at Grove after his unwanted Ferrari swap, but the team shared the responsibility for his struggles after the Spaniard bore the brunt of a spate of operational glitches and reliability gremlins.
Having only scored 16 points thus far, Sainz almost doubled his tally with a breakthrough podium in Baku and the emotional scenes on the podium highlighted just how much he needed that.
This was not just a lucky podium either. Sure, Sainz was fortunate that he and the Racing Bulls cars were the only drivers to set a lap before the first red flag in Q3, but the final shootout showed that challenging track conditions were still good enough to demote him. Verstappen did so to deny Williams a shock pole, while others faltered.
From second on the grid Sainz had nothing for Mercedes’ George Russell, who successfully employed the reverse strategy, but Sainz and Williams were genuinely rapid and comfortably held off the second Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli. It’s a huge step for Williams as it fights to secure fifth in the championship, while Sainz’s breakthrough result will undoubtedly change his outlook on what had been a bruising campaign until now.
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For a driver who had been rightly praised for his unperturbed consistency, Petit Alain Prost had an off-kilter weekend to forget. On the scene of his excellent second grand prix victory last year, Piastri looked uncomfortable in the McLaren all weekend until he fought his way back into pole contention right when it mattered in qualifying, which is one of his most impressive qualities.
But that proved a false dawn as Piastri stacked it in Turn 3, relegating him to ninth on the grid. Sunday’s race soon went from bad to worse when Piastri dropped the clutch at the start, causing a false start while being shuffled to the back of the pack. His race lasted five more corners until he locked up offline into Turn 5 and hit the barriers again, forcing him to watch the race from the side of the track as he borrowed a marshal’s phone.
Overall, it’s a rare messy weekend for Piastri, with the silver lining that he was let off the hook by his team-mate and title rival. But we’ll get to that in just a second.
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Winner: Max Verstappen
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella caused some debate on Saturday when he was adamant Max Verstappen is still a factor in this year’s title fight, despite trailing Piastri by 94 points into the Baku weekend. A few more races like Baku, and the Italian might even be proven right.
Qualifying was another vintage display of Verstappen’s peerless class, with his windy pole lap to deny Sainz having an air of inevitability. And, respectfully, by having Sainz and Lawson as a handy buffer on the starting grid the Dutchman was never going to lose that race.
But the bigger win is what Verstappen’s second triumph on the bounce represents for him and Red Bull. After the team’s season looked dead and buried in Hungary, the squad has caught a second wind under incoming team principal Laurent Mekies, modest as he may be about his own contribution.
Is Red Bull really back? The real litmus test will follow in two weeks on the bumpy streets of Singapore, which has been the squad’s kryptonite.
Lando Norris, McLaren
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Both after a lowly seventh qualifying position and after crossing the finish line in the same position on Sunday, Lando Norris didn’t want to hear about Baku being a missed opportunity for him as Piastri failed to score. It speaks well for how philosophically Norris is approaching his first bona fide title battle, but the truth is: Of course it was.
Following his painful Zandvoort retirement, it always looked like Norris was going to need Piastri to hit some bad luck of his own to get back on terms in their good-natured title battle. That opportunity arrived in Baku, but Norris was unable to grab it with both hands and he will be disappointed to only bring the gap down from 31 to 25 points.
McLaren was not operating at its usual lofty standards on a circuit that didn’t accentuate any of its car’s strengths, certainly not compared to the Red Bull, but the MCL39 was good enough for a podium and that would have given the title fight a different outlook.
With how consistent Piastri has otherwise been, this may have been a rare opportunity to take a big bite out of the Australian’s lead.
Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team
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There has been a lot of hype around Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar this year. According to our information, you can make that ‘Red Bull Racing driver elect’ for 2026. And Hadjar has earned every bit of it with his stunning rookie performances, highlighted by a podium in Zandvoort.
But his team-mate Liam Lawson has been quietly rehabilitating himself after a brutal two-race Red Bull stint, when the New Zealander was thrown under the bus. But Lawson dusted himself off and chipped away at Hadjar’s edge, having missed pre-season with the VCARB 02.
Lawson has now outqualified Hadjar twice in four race weekends as he attempts to get on par with his team-mate. What is sometimes overlooked is that Lawson still hasn’t completed a full season in F1 yet either, even if he is perceived to be vastly more experienced.
But as Red Bull looks likely to lose either Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda next year, Lawson is gradually staking his claim to stay exactly where he is.
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Loser: Ferrari
The team that took pole for the past four editions of the Baku race ended up eighth and ninth. On paper this was perhaps Ferrari’s best chance to win until November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, but the Scuderia flattered to deceive on a circuit that should have suited its characteristics.
In qualifying Lewis Hamilton missed the top 10 cutoff by a big margin as he was sent out on softs when he really wanted to keep a set of mediums. Leclerc did advance but was one of several drivers to impact the wall, leaving him 10th on the grid.
Both drivers were combative on Sunday, with Leclerc picking off Norris after the McLaren driver looked asleep on the early restart, but they didn’t have the overall pace to sustain a comeback and settled for eighth and ninth, with some late frustration over a botched team orders swap that was at least as much down to late Ferrari communication as it was down to Hamilton.
As it happened, the pair finished behind cars from Williams and Racing Bulls, and they lost a huge chunk of constructors’ points to both Mercedes and Red Bull. The Italian press will likely be ablaze after such an underwhelming performance in the Land of Fire.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
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Winner: Andrea Kimi Antonelli
Speaking about underwhelming, that’s the term Toto Wolff reserved for Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s disappointing and messy Monza weekend. To Antonelli’s credit, he understood the message. He desperately needed to shake off any lingering disappointment from past events and deliver a clean weekend.
The 19-year-old did so with aplomb. In a blustery qualifying session, with the deceptively tricky Baku street circuit littered with proverbial banana peels, Kimi channelled his Finnish namesake and kept cool to take fourth ahead of team-mate George Russell, while more experienced competitors combined to cause a record six red flags.
As the race unfolded Antonelli got the short end of the stick, with Russell’s hard-to-medium strategy eventually paying bigger dividends than the Italian’s medium-to-hard choice. And while he was disappointed not to have a go at Sainz for a second grand prix podium, his much-needed Baku rebound came at the right time to calm any nerves within Mercedes, and especially within himself.
We’d also be remiss not to mention Russell battling flu symptoms all weekend to grab an excellent second place, but Antonelli craved his result more than the Briton needed his.
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Loser: Alex Albon
There are plenty of candidates for our final spot as many midfielders missed an opportunity to shine in Baku. But none more so than Alex Albon, who graciously attended the podium ceremony for his team-mate Sainz. But truth be told, that could have been Albon given Williams’ pace around Baku. He will have been disappointed it wasn’t him who handed Williams its first podium of this era after sticking with the squad through thick and thin, even if he is too much of a gentleman and team player to rain on Sainz’s parade.
Albon ruined his own weekend by clattering the inside wall in Turn 1 on his second run in Q1. That left him last on the grid, gambling on early pitstops to go to the end with a long stint. It was always an uphill battle from there, but a clumsy half-hearted overtake attempt on Franco Colapinto, that sent the Alpine into a spin, was correctly met with a 10-second penalty that further scuppered his chances.
It’s a rare off-kilter weekend for Albon, who had been such a strong and consistent performer this year. But as Sainz’s breakthrough result showed, Baku was a particularly painful weekend for that to happen.
