You thought the late lunge was coming from Charles Leclerc.
But it never came.
As the laps ticked down in the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the battle at the front was perhaps the finest of the season. A stunning lunge from Oscar Piastri at the start of Lap 20 saw the McLaren driver seize the lead from Leclerc, who looked as if he had one hand on the biggest trophy following a tremendous opening stint on a set of mediums. But with a set of hards bolted on Piastri’s MCL38, the car came alive in the Australian driver’s hands, allowing for yet another stunning overtake from Piastri in a season filled with them.
But as those crucial laps ticked down, Leclerc reeled Piastri in. There were a few laps where, at the end of one of the season’s longest straights Leclerc sniffed an overtake of Piastri, but he was not able to finish the move as the Australian driver got his elbows out and defended every meter he needed on the track.
However, those laps of reeling Piastri in finally took their toll. On Lap 48 of 51, Leclerc told his team that his rear tires were gone. Piastri pulled away, and suddenly the Ferrari driver was forced to defend from a charging “King of the Streets,” as Sergio Pérez was right on his rear wing in a fight for second.
That fight ended in disaster. On Lap 50 Pérez and Carlos Sainz Jr. came together, crashing into each other and bringing out the virtual safety car. Pérez had gotten by Leclerc for a moment, opening the door for Sainz to get into third. But as Pérez rejoined that fight for third with Sainz, the two “drifted into each other” as described by Jolyon Palmer on F1TV, ending the race for both of them.
“What happened there? What happened?” asked Sainz after the collision.
Behind those drivers, another critical battle played out. After a catastrophic Saturday Lando Norris began the day outside of the points, but a long stint on the hard tires to begin the day saw Norris pull into the points. As those laps ticked down he was reeling in Max Verstappen, his rival in the Drivers’ Championship. A lead of over ten seconds for Verstappen for P6, ahead of Norris in P7, ticked down into the single digits as the laps peeled away.
By Lap 47, Norris was within three seconds of Verstappen.
By Lap 49, he was ahead of him, passing Verstappen for P6 in the race, and taking away two more points from the Red Bull driver.
The crash on Lap 50 brought out the virtual safety car, and the race ended under those conditions, delivering a multitude of surprises. A win for Piastri, a second-place finish for Leclerc, a surprise stunning fourth-place finish for Norris — after starting in 15th — and something we have not seen since 2014:
McLaren atop the Constructors’ Championship standings.
Between Piastri’s victory and Norris’ stunning recovery drive — finishing fourth and picking up a bonus point for the fastest lap of the race — McLaren now sits in the championship lead by 20 points over Red Bull.
“I felt like we had a bit of little extra grip and I had to go for it because I knew that if I didn’t get past at the start of the stint I was never going to get past. Went for a pretty big lunge but managed to pull it off, and hung on for dear life for the next 35 laps,” described Piastri to Guenther Steiner. “Was one of the better races of my career.”
The Australian driver then outlined what taking the lead in the championship means to him, and the team.
“Considering where we started when I joined the team last year, we were literally last, and now we are leading the world championship. It’s a full credit to the team for the turnaround we’ve managed to have,” described Piastri. “It’s a massive team effort, and excited to see what the future holds.”
That future holds a stunning three-way fight for the Constructors’ Championship. With the grid heading to Singapore for next weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, McLaren leads Red Bull 476-456 in the Constructors’ Championship, with Ferrari just behind them with 425 points on the year.
But after weeks filled with McLaren facing questions about whether they could truly get things right in that fight, and questions about team orders, they put together the Sunday they needed to leave Baku behind as the leaders in the championship. Yes, Piastri’s win was a huge factor, but do not discount what Norris was able to do on his side of the garage. Not just getting into the points, but during a crucial portion of the race, when Piastri was about to make his first pit stop, Norris was instructed to hold Pérez back a bit, to give Piastri and the team more of a gap between him and Pérez when he rejoined the race after his stop.
Norris executed that to perfection, allowing Piastri to rejoin the race ahead of the Red Bull driver. Rather than battling Pérez for second, Piastri was in a position to chase down Leclerc for first.
Which he did in the end.
We do not know if McLaren will hold onto that lead in the Constructors’ Championship, and in a season with so many twists and turns, more certainly seem on the horizon.
But if they do go on to secure a championship, this may be the day they look at where it truly came together.
