For the first half of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, George Russell was able to build a gap beyond 10 seconds to the chasing pack, as the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar struggled to pass Oscar Piastri’s McLaren.
That picture altered abruptly when the safety car was deployed after Alex Albon’s Williams became embedded in the wall at Turn 5 on lap 31. Russell’s margin vanished as the safety car bunched up the field, and Verstappen seized the moment to pass Piastri at the restart.
From there, while Russell maintained marginally quicker for the majority of the closing laps, he was never able to shake Verstappen off. When Valtteri Bottas went off at Turn 15 on the final lap, Russell’s turbo went off boost as he slowed to obey the yellow flags at the scene, enabling Verstappen to latch onto his tail again and set up a dramatic lunge to the tape.
What’s remarkable is that on most laps, Russell was substantially faster than Verstappen through the second sector, which extends from the Turn 5 braking zone, around the tight section circumnavigating the old city walls, through to the Turn 16 braking zone. But Verstappen was able to come right back at him on the straight, even if he hadn’t been close enough on the previous lap to access the extra half-megajoule of electrical harvesting and deployment granted by overtake mode.
Mercedes deputy Formula 1 team principal Bradley Lord described it in vivid terms, saying “it was like Max was on some sort of massive bungee cord”.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images
Just 0.196s separated Russell from Verstappen at the line, making this one of the closest finishes in world championship history – although that statistic is skewed by the relative crudeness of the timing systems until recent decades.
“On the last lap you can drain the battery from top to bottom so you don’t have to keep the [battery] pack balanced for the following lap,” said Lord.
“And so it was good we had that in the pocket because the gap had gone from a second and a half to half a second through that double yellow. George dropped off the boost slightly as well, which sometimes can happen when the car speed drops too low and the engine speed does as well.
“But no, it was like Max was on some sort of massive bungee cord. George would literally put half a second on him every lap through the middle sector. And you look at the GPS trace and suddenly it almost goes vertical as the tow pulls Max back in.
“So if anything it almost seemed he [Verstappen] was gaining more without overtake mode than with, which was quite counterintuitive. But even though it looked very close on the TV pictures and obviously they foreshortened things a little bit, there wasn’t any point where he was close enough to make an attempt or to contemplate an overtake.
“So I think George had it all under control, albeit one tiny mistake and it could have looked pretty different. Just an absolutely fantastic job from him. He said he’d brushed the wall, [earlier in the race] but he actually gained time doing it. So clearly he judged even that perfectly.”
From the end of the safety car period on lap 39, Verstappen was only quicker than Russell on laps 42, 43, 44 and 48 – the latter by three milliseconds. In terms of overall laptime they were rarely separated by more than a tenth, although Russell was 0.183s quicker on the penultimate lap.
Albon’s shunt changed the direction of the race
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
Taking lap 48 as an example, the telemetry data indicates Verstappen was actually around a tenth of a second up on Russell early on, by dint of briefly being 17km/h faster on the stretch between Turns 2 and 3 – likely a factor of using more electrical deployment. But Russell was able to get off the throttle later and parlay the Mercedes’ handling advantage into faster apex speeds at Turn 3 and 4, immediately inverting the deficit.
Through the second sector, Russell built his advantage to a peak of 0.420s through the twistier sections: later off the throttle into Turn 5, giving a higher apex speed, then hitting a higher peak speed on the run to Turn 7 even though Verstappen used some boost to gain a faster initial exit from Turn 6. And while Verstappen came back at him through the stretch between Turns 13 and 14, with a higher top speed, again the Mercedes’ more biddable chassis made the difference at Turn 15, where Russell was able to dethrottle much later and pull the gap back to 0.583s.
Verstappen got a quicker exit, nibbling away at the gap, but again the Merc was quicker through Turn 16, taking the gap to 0.541s. From there onwards, as they passed the detection point unlocking overtake mode for the following lap. Verstappen simply ate up the gap, changing to top gear much earlier than Russell – before Turn 18 rather than after Turn 19 – and attaining a slightly higher top speed for the remainder of the lap.
Once on the straight itself, Verstappen was around 11km/h faster all the way to the line, hence his total time being just 0.003s slower despite losing half a second earlier in the lap. The Red Bull internal combustion engine is the most powerful on the grid, hence its position atop the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) framework, but as a package the Mercedes PU is still believed to be superior.
Still, while Verstappen and Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies would not be drawn on how significant a role the Ford-backed PU made, Arvid Lindblad, whose VCARB uses the same unit, described it as “a rocketship”.
Given how much of a speed advantage Verstappen enjoyed in both straightline mode zones when in Russell’s tow, it’s likely the Red Bull is particularly slippery when its active aerodynamics are deployed – something other teams will no doubt be examining with great interest.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com
