Has George ‘cracked the code’? – Azerbaijan GP Review

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1:26James Hinchcliffe:Thumbtack, we know homes Hire the right pro today Russell wins the Azerbaijan Grand Prix By one tenth of a second Oh, that was the fast last bit He was, uh, touching What I'm really curious about is Has George cracked the code a little bit? What actually that last set of upgrades could do for Mercedes is turn this into a Rosberg Hamilton World Championship, couldn't it? Max always maximizes the package and the program that he's got. And he maximizes the team orders as well. That was interesting.

2:13Welcome one and all to the Baku Paddock for F1 Nation's review of a thrilling Azerbaijan Grand Prix. I'm Tom Clarkson alongside two of F1 TV's finest IndyCar race winner James Hinchcliffe and two-time Le Mans podium finisher Alex Brundle. Guys, I feel we've just had a modern-day classic. What do you think? What are your headlines from that? It was in the second half a brilliant Grand Prix. I was a little bit worried in the first half, I must admit, because it was kind of the gaps were growing and the overtaking was sort of paced. but then after the two safety cars, Verstappen brought the race alive, didn't he?

2:52Hunting down George Russell on the soft tyre which worked so much better on the Red Bull than the medium tyre did and, you know, a tenth of a second at the line, so impressive. They've both just been eulogising about that final stint in the press conference, both saying it was quali laps every lap, no tyre degradation. I mean, how good was George Russell just to keep Max at bay there?

3:14James Hinchcliffe:Let's just think about how good Max is, right? And how much we talk about him and how much we praise his ability in these types of races, just bringing that extra level for George to have to live under that amount of pressure with the confines of, you know, the concrete walls that line the racetrack. They both got incredibly close many times to big accidents or big contact with the wall. But credit to George. I mean, all the way down. And it looked like it was actually calmed down by the last lap until that yellow in the worst possible place for him set up that drag race to the finish. The pressure that he withstood in the second half in general, in the last 10 in particular, phenomenal.

3:52Do you think it was a crucial moment? Had Max got that two tenths on him at the line and he'd lost this race, the impact on George Russell, I think, would have been significant given everything that he's been through this year. Yeah, I think it was. I mean, George has been explaining it over and over again. it looms large in his mind, doesn't it? He can live every moment of it. I think it was a huge moment for George Russell getting that car to the line. He must have thrown all of his toys all over the racetrack in order to get it down there. Let's break George's weekend down, can we, right? So he came here on the back of his teammate, getting yet another win in Madrid a couple of weeks ago, still feeling on the back foot, still feeling a little bit frustrated in the press conference on Thursday.

4:37and yet he hit the ground running. How much of a surprise was it for both of you guys to see him just so convincing this weekend? Not a surprise at all because I knew that the Mercedes was going to be brilliant around here. I knew that they were going to have engine performance around here. On the flip side, Kimi Antonelli was having a bit of a difficult run through free practice. And so I knew the car was going to be up there and George was, I think, making the most of a good package. The surprise for me was Verstappen. The surprise for me was how close Verstappen was in FP3. I think he probably had an issue in qualifying that would have seen him further up the grid.

5:19But in the race as well, I wasn't shocked to see the pace of the Mercedes here. We'd kind of predicted it. But Alex, the point is that the Mercedes has been brilliant at other races this year, and he hasn't maximised the performance. Is it the short radius corners here?

5:35James Hinchcliffe:What's interesting for me is, even at other tracks when George has been able to pull out good laps in practice, a good qualifying effort, in the race, over stints, race pace, Kimi's always still kind of had the edge. Even when George has won, you know, you think back, he passed him in Barcelona before Kimi's car expired. He was closing down on everybody in Austria. Today they didn't have that. Kimi did not have the pace of George. Kimmy didn't have the pace at George all weekend long. Fine, he missed some laps in first practice, but he had FP2, he had FP3. He's a professional. He gets up to speed quickly.

6:11James Hinchcliffe:What I'm really curious about is, has George cracked the code a little bit? Has he found something? Has he figured out how to get that extra step of performance out of this car? Because at no point this weekend was Kimmy anywhere close to his level. It's interesting, isn't it? because we'd go back, for example, to Spa, and at a circuit like this, we would have discussed how Kimi's driving style is allowing him to keep energy through the layout, and then it's energy that he has to deploy to the line and surmise that his style suits this type of car, etc. It was just none of that this weekend. When you look at the qualifying performance that Russell had, when you look at the deployment he had, there was just efficiency pouring out of the whole thing.

6:58oh yeah and maybe maybe he's cracked the code late in the season to be cracking the code and he's got a lot of work to do and and if that is the case he'll be thinking ah i wish i knew now i wish if only i knew what i knew now when i was younger you know only a couple of races younger

7:14James Hinchcliffe:but younger and i'm not saying that he has but i'm curious well if we get to malaysia if we get to singapore if we start seeing him closer especially in race pace maybe he has kind of finally start to to put all the pieces together i think this is a confidence game i don't i think george russell will not look back now eight tenths in qualifying over the entire field and then a win like that under pressure for max verstappen it was max verstappen who was making the mistakes behind him kissing the wall not george russell i think he will not look back he's just said right i'm going to just focus on myself i'm going to try and win every grand prix for the remainder of this season and on the evidence of everything we've seen in baku i think you'd be a brave man to bet against him.

7:56Mercedes are bringing upgrades to the next race in Sepang. If they work, I still think George Russell's got a chance in this world championship. He's only 66 points behind Kimi Antonelli.

8:08James Hinchcliffe:And you got to remember, not to be unkind about it, but Kimi was, he was lucky again. I mean, I want to say it was Jacques Villeneuve maybe in an article I read had a quote saying he's got the champion's luck. Sometimes you just have those years where, yes, You're doing a great job. The car's good. You're performing well. But you also just have these strokes of luck like Madrid, like here. He wasn't going to pass his way up to where he finished. He benefited from some of those accidents on the restarts. He just didn't have that same, you know, Monza-esque ability to cut through the field. So it is still open.

8:39James Hinchcliffe:It should have been more than 15 points this weekend, though. George deserved more than a 15-point swing, I think. I think it goes to show what happened when you set out in a Grand Prix and you set out to try not to crash, which is what I believe Kimi did today. I think Kimi started this race from 16th on the grid and the only thing in his mind was he assumed the car on him was going to get him deep into the points and it was going to be a damage limitation. Okay, might have been a podium, might have not been a podium, but it wouldn't have been that bad in comparison to the margin that he had.

9:13And I agree that he has benefited from a bit of attrition in the middle of the pack, but it shows if he's not aggressive still even with the margin that he's got through to the rest of the season and delivering the the pace that he's shown throughout the year then then the gap will actually close it's unbelievable isn't it when you have so many f1 races in a season just how many points there are on offer we've seen massive championship swings we saw one last year um and it's yeah and george has been counting himself out for a couple of races now and we keep on saying he's not out. I mean this is the first conservative race we've seen Kimi Antonelli drive this year you know remember Monaco winning by a mile but still just smashing in lap after lap quicker than anybody else this is the first time he's been tentative probably very sensible but it does make you wonder if he's now starting to think of the bigger picture and driving with the championship in mind for the first time every champion that you ever interview at this phase of of the year will always immediately say they're not doing that because it's not the right mindset the right mindset is to drive each and every grand prix as its own event and almost forget that these races are involved in in a championship at all drive the racetrack that that's in front of you and if that's the mindset that he's taking into the the grand prix he's leaving the door open in my in my opinion he's not had the best weekend he is out of position it would have been super easy i mean you saw later on in the grand prix with the incident with franco colopinto how easy it is if you're further back down the field just have a silly lock up and you know and take out and take out half the grid and then it's not a 15 point swing it's a 25 point swing which is even more of a problem so I get it um but there are enough races left that actually that damage limitation wasn't limiting enough was it for for Kimi if if that happens every weekend then

11:14James Hinchcliffe:he's still got a problem to the end of the year I was having a conversation with our uh beloved F1 TV colleagues in Madrid Julian Palmer and Alex Jakes where Julian and I were sort of resigned to you know forfeiting the championship race is over and he's gonna he's gonna win it by I was going to have it wrapped up by Austin, you know, like, and, and Jakes, he had a line that I, I really, really respected. I really, really made you think he, he said, nobody wins their first world championship easily. And I started, I'm like, well, I can't possibly be right. And I started thinking back and I, and I genuinely couldn't think of one.

11:52James Hinchcliffe:If you think of all the first time champions over the last 20 years, not one of those came with a lock it up with three to go. and now we're just in that realm of the season where it can start to shift and we might see it actually become a little bit tenuous for him. Damn you, Jake C. This is a really good point. It got me excited. The closest I can come to what we're seeing now is 2009 with Jenson. He dominated the early part of the season. Tell me how stressful that was for the last three Grand Prix. And you talk about champions luck. I remember we go to Malaysia next weekend and I remember Malaysia 2009.

12:282009 they abandoned that race after i think 32 laps because of a rainstorm jensen was in the right place he won that race and we're all thinking well this is all over isn't it fast forward to the end of the year it's because at this stage of the year when you are going through that experience for the first time there's so much pressure and uncertainty that actually the sporting mindset starts pushing you backwards i mean you read sports autobiographies any great sports person of any discipline will talk about the end of i'm thinking actually of andre agassi who writes in great depth about the end of the match sort of pushing him backwards away from the victory and him having to kind of push back that's almost the the pressure of you know being on the the precipice of success and and each individual sports person has to has to overcome that and i think we're seeing that with kimmy it's it's so close but yet so far i think a lot will rest on the effectiveness of the Mercedes upgrades that we're seeing this coming weekend in Sepang.

13:30If they don't work as well as the team hopes, with Red Bull's resurgence with the new parts they put on here in Baku, that's only going to complicate it more for Kimi Antonelli, isn't it? It is. A very different racetrack in Sepang. I'm thinking longer term, Al, as well, though. Yeah, we've got a variety of different layouts through to the rest of the year. And what we have seen throughout this year in Formula One For example, if Ferrari aren't super quick in Interlagos, I'll be shocked. If they're not super quick in Singapore, I'll be shocked. If they're not a factor for the race victory. McLaren, with the high-speed cornering capacity that they have, could be marvellous in Sepang, for example.

14:12So there are a lot of interplays to yet play out. You're right. you know what actually that last set of upgrades could do uh for mercedes is turn this into a rosberg hamilton world championship couldn't it if it sets them beyond if it sets them just beyond the rest of the field then one-on-one i actually think that plays beautifully into kimmy antonelli's hands because i think then the point swings aren't going to be large enough for george russell to uh to make enough of a difference through those final races. He needs a bit of intervention from the rest of the field. So speaking as a neutral, we want the likes of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris to be up there meddling with it, don't they?

14:56Yeah, well, exactly. And I think, you know, you look at the interplay between the two, and he won the championship to last, obviously, as long as possible. But from Russell's perspective, he needs to have everybody meddling and taking the big points away from Kimi Antoinette, because we know both those Mercedes are going to be out front.

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16:09James Hinchcliffe:with the right pro for the job. Thumbtack. We know homes. Hire the right pro today.

16:22Let's talk some more about Red Bull. So nice to see Red Bull back being feisty because that's what they do, isn't it? That's what they do best. And, you know, just to see Max Verstappen. I mean, guys, helmets on. Put yourselves in George Russell's position in those closing laps. You could hear the Jaws music, couldn't you?

16:38James Hinchcliffe:there's nobody you want to see in your mirror less at that stage and especially because you know he started out of position right he did have a problem in qualifying we saw him top fp3 so george knew i think george even said before the race i think red bull's our biggest threat he had a ferrari beside him he had a mclaren behind him and he said that red bull was our biggest threat he was absolutely right because both of those cars ended up on the podium so when you're in a late race dash fresh set of soft tires there's there's literally nobody that you want to see. I mean, the race was going so well.

17:09James Hinchcliffe:He was a dozen seconds in the lead and all of a sudden it's, oh, restart with Max Verstappen on your gearbox. Come on. The other thing is, you think George Russell's got nothing to lose at this stage in the championship? Verstappen properly has nothing to lose apart from the opportunity to take a race victory. I agree. I mean, that is like nightmare fuel. Seeing Max Verstappen skidding up, tapping walls on a set of soft tires behind you just desperate to make your life as difficult as possible and george was metronomic but but what about the pace of red bull here were you guys surprised that the upgrades were as good as they were yeah i i think we were lulled into a false sense of security a little bit by max obviously having an issue with the engine in qualifying um he was really unhappy with the amount of straight line speed he had i think he could have been further up the grid had jar i think performed beautifully this weekend but i think the the big lamp that we're so used to seeing at the end of q3 for max of sapin probably didn't happen for that reason um and then they just found this straight line speed somehow in the race i'm gonna have to look very deep in the data to find out what the difference was between qualifying deployment and race deployment that's something that the rest need to watch throughout the the rest of the season is if red bull are going to be able to consistently show up at these high deployment races i'm thinking Vegas I'm thinking to an agree Austin you know and suddenly rock up with a load of straight line speed and be able to pass people then then that's going to be a challenge for the rest of the field but yeah having them sort of best of the rest in terms of pace was impressive what a return to the cockpit as well for Isaac Hadjar who I think earned himself some serious stripes today well he is actually my guest on this coming uh beyond the grid this coming Wednesday he was brilliant just talking us through it.

18:58James Hinchcliffe:What a beautiful plug. What a well-timed segue, Tom. Thanks, Sal. Thanks for that. I mean, he was good, but just final thoughts on Max. Do you think this was a missed opportunity for him? Had he not had to start P8? If he'd been on the front row, do you think he could have won this Grand Prix? I really don't. I think even from the front row, I mean, he got there, right? He got there when it mattered, which was at the end of the race. The safety car reset everything. Unless he was able to out-drag Russell off the line, which we saw that the, you know, the odd number side of the racetrack, right?

19:34James Hinchcliffe:The pole sitter P3, they got better launches. I don't think it was actually advantageous to start P2. He got to where he needed to be to really put the fight to him. That gap in qualifying was so bad. He was never going to be on pole. Even with a Max Verstappen glory lap, it was never going to be on pole. Best was going to be second. And that's the position he held, you know, at the end of the race. So I still think George just, just, by the slimmest of margins, literally, had the measure of him. But again, it just shows Max always maximizes the package and the program that he's got. And he maximizes the team orders as well.

20:08James Hinchcliffe:That was interesting. Yeah, yeah. I want to know what's written down on the rules of engagement. But I mean, you know, Isaac giving up his position, then faster than Max, obviously, at the midpoint of that first stint and was not allowed back through. Simple as that. It's an interesting interplay between the two of them. The medium tie worked so much worse on the Red Bull than the soft tie did. I don't think it made a huge amount of difference to their eventual finishing positions when you look how far Isaac was behind at the end of the race. But honestly, there's definitely a period there where on the pit wall, I would have switched them back.

20:45And I think giving Isaac a chance to overtake the McLaren was a reasonable thing to do. but I think there's it's still the Red Bull second seed, there's a hierarchy in that team and they decided not to break it. Alex I want to know how you would have phrased that sentence to Max Verstappen over the radio. That's out there in the not my problem field Tom and therein lies the issue right so each of these races are not an entity within themselves as much as Kimi Antonelli should probably be focusing on them like that and so you exist in a Red Bull team built on the back of the performances of Max Verstappen Hadjar I think pushed as hard as he can but earned himself again a lot of kudos within that team a lot of respect I believe within that team by not screaming any louder on the radio to be let that through Right, Hinch, tell us more about Hadjar's comeback Right.

21:46And I don't want to in any way belittle the injury that you had in IndyCar, but you know what it's like to come back from injury. Yours was obviously far worse than what Hadjar's just been through. But months on the couch for you, weeks for him. Can you relate to the sort of frustrations he's just been through, albeit over a shorter period of time for him?

22:07James Hinchcliffe:Absolutely. I mean, there's nothing worse than watching someone else drive your race car. Right. Even with all the assurances, it's not like his seat was not under threat. even if Liam Lawson was out there putting it on the podium. He had a contract. He's been so strong. There was never any doubt about that. So you can kind of put that to the side. It's still like watching someone take your girlfriend on a date, right? It's a really unpleasant feeling. And I think it does make for extra motivation when you get back in the car. But what are the interesting things about a mid-season injury, especially in a series with a schedule that is as grueling as Formula One, was for those weeks, Isak had one job, which is get better.

22:53James Hinchcliffe:He traveled to the races, but he was not doing appearances. He was sitting in engineering meetings. He wasn't physically draining himself in the car. It was nowhere near the amount of stress and mental and physical fatigue that comes from being an active driver. so he would have come into this weekend in a lot of ways fresher and just kind of more recharged than anyone else in the field because he had, quote-unquote, six weeks off. But is there a temptation to overdrive because you're just so desperate to prove your worth? There is, certainly, and I actually give him so much credit because he did the exact opposite.

23:31James Hinchcliffe:I mean, he said, I probably underdrove in qualifying. I just didn't want to come in and hit the wall. He sort of let the cat out of the bag a little bit. His wrist is just good enough to get back in the car, but it's by no means 100 % because he said, I don't want to hit the wall with the state of my wrist. So there is still an underlying issue there. He's still driving through a bit of an injury, but I think he took an incredibly mature approach and was rewarded for a brilliant drive. What's interesting, and I totally agree, it's a mental recharge is what we're talking about. you know it's not like they're mentally spent and then they go to the next race and they're not fully back and the amount of concentration these cars are taking i completely agree when you've not had to think about it we've not had to bury your mind in a grand prix week in week out you come in a bit fresher and a new perspective um you you definitely gain something but is it kind of impossible to simulate that there's no amount of you know it's not like you can rest a muscle and have a physio and get that kind of sharpness back and we've all been there in the middle of a season when the races start blending into one another then you have a bit of a break and you hit it fresh again and some drivers move forward and some drivers take a take a step back they'll be looking at it and thinking yeah how can we continuously give them that mental freshness but i don't think there's a way there's not a way that any of the sponsors are going to like but no i can think of one it's going to be very unpopular with the commercial department but that's true Actually, it's a really good point, isn't it?

25:02James Hinchcliffe:It's all it is. Driving the race car is mentally taxing, sure. But if you had four days off in between every race to kind of do nothing else, it would be very different. The drivers that are doing these races, they're in the sim. They're doing media appearances. They're doing sponsor appearances. Driving the race car is a pretty small portion of the job of a Formula One driver. Now there's somebody sitting in Red Bull quantifying the cost in terms of lap time per personal appearance. well it looked yeah we can have him on the main stage but it's going to cost you two hundredths all right what about ferrari if we can celebrate the performances of mercedes and and red bull here in baku ferrari were anonymous now they were faced at the race where leclerc was you know even in the better of the two ferraris was eight tenths to a second off the pace uh they just they just didn't have the speed didn't have the straight line speed i actually think that you know kind of fortunate to finish where they were you've got piastri long um in one of the braking zones you've got other cars out of the race and and restarts to bring them back into contention but these big deployment racetracks are just still not their happy hunting ground are they you can tell but it's not just deployment it's about tire tire warm-up and all that isn't it i think one of their strengths was really eliminated here in in tire degradation there was no tire degradation people were running the softs 30 laps the ferrari has been very good at that um that's part of the reason why you know hamilton struggles to get the not just hamilton this weekend he talked about how he was struggling to get the tires up to temperature for qualifying they're a little bit gentler on their tires great for the race only if it's a high deg race this was not at all so i i do think that not only are some of their weaknesses exposed i think some of their strengths were kind of reined in by the nature of the tire.

26:52You also have a ton of traction zones here, which is where we've seen that Ferrari struggle. It's got a razor sharp front end, and then it has this nasty snappy phase mid to exit of the corner. You can see the drivers having to wait a little bit on the throttle. So I agree with Hinch. It's kind of, I didn't really, you look at the circuit layer and you think, yep, lots of slow corners, nice compliant Ferrari, should be fine but actually you've got a lot of long straights and you have to get up and go out of all of those slow corners where the ferrari seem good in the switchbacks where you have to carry minimum apex speed uh rather than actually stop turn and then get out there's always so much noise around ferrari isn't there a you know it seems that when they're good everyone's i don't talk about everyone's about the media as much as anything is so supportive and then And when everything's a bit more difficult, I'm sure the headlines in Italy tomorrow won't be complimentary.

27:47Not helped, I might add, by some quotes from Christian Horner that came out earlier this weekend saying, yeah, I'd have a shout at Ferrari if they asked me to run Ferrari. So that suddenly puts pressure on Fred Vasseur. As team principal, completely unjustified, but it's just another thing that the team doesn't need, isn't it?

28:06James Hinchcliffe:Yeah, I mean, he'd have a shout at any job that he was offering. I don't think he's picky at this point. No, it's the double-edged sword of being Ferrari, right? You are the oldest, most tenured, most beloved, most revered team on the grid. And I do think that they get undue criticism sometimes and maybe undue praise at the same time. It's one of those things. I think what Fred's been very good at is addressing the noise, but kind of being able to block it out and protect the people internally. I think that's been one of the bigger issues in years past and under different leaders is it seeps into the team.