ROUND 17: 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX 2024
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Baku City Circuit
- First Grand Prix: 2016
- Number of laps: 51
- Circuit Length: 6.003 km
- Race Distance: 306.049 km
- Lap record: 1:43.009 Charles Leclerc (2019)
- 2023 winner: Sergio Perez
WTF happened there??
Looked like a puncture back left for Sainz?
This feels like the most likely explanation to me, it looked like SAI got almost sucked into the inside of PER’s car…
I just had another look at Sergio’s on board. He touched the back left of Carloz who was slowly drifting towards him. Could have been avoided by Sergio.
Ah thank you, that explains it.
My guess is Carlos was blinded by the light after the turn and couldn’t properly see he was inching to the left.
Perez could have avoided that and got his best result for a long time. Hell he could still have overtaken sainz there if he just moved left slightly
Edit : I guess perez was also slightly blinded by the sun and did not realise he was drifting towards sainz. Unfortunate
It’s kind of irresponsible to be racing at that time of day if drivers end up going down a straight blind like that. They should probably move the start to a bit earlier in the day.
Russell said he couldn’t see shit going past the accident and they were lucky they both were on the side of the road and hadn’t bounced back into the middle.
But I’m from the UK and it would inconvenience me if the race were any earlier
Fine, we’ll just endanger the drivers for your convenience.
How about, as a compromise, we race earlier in the day but shine a spotlight down the straight so the drivers are still blinded?
(And if you haven’t worked it out yet, I’m joking)
Yeah, I got that.
I’m actually wondering if a night race could be an option.
My guess is that both were trying to catch Leclerc’s slipstream and were focused on Leclerc and not each other. That said if I had to assign blame I think it’s more on Perez than Sainz.
Perez was driving a straight line, wasn’t he? Carlos was driving ever so lightly left
I thought he was drifting slightly right to go towards the racing line. Sainz was drifting more though. Still I think perez was much better placed to prevent that crash
But ahead of Perez, who could have adjusted but didn’t for some reason
We’ll see what they say but I guess the low sun could be an explanation
I would need to watch their cameras at that point to be sure, but from the replay on the fixed camera that’s the impression I got.