BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Battles for the lead, a dramatic late crash, a championship contender’s comeback.
Oscar Piastri won an instant Formula 1 classic that had it all at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday.
Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz Jr. collided while fighting for podium places and title challenger Lando Norris battled his way from 15th on the grid to finish fourth — crucially ahead of standings leader Max Verstappen.
McLaren’s Piastri started second behind Leclerc but took the lead with a daring swoop past the Ferrari driver into the first corner on lap 20 of 51.
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez tried to attack Leclerc for second late on but ended up colliding with the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz Jr., who was close behind. George Russell ended up third for Mercedes as the race finished under speed restrictions.
“That was probably the most stressful afternoon of my life,” Piastri, who took his second career win, told his team over the radio just after the race.
Norris was following close behind Sainz and Perez when they crashed and recounted the experience of driving into flying debris.
“Driving full gas into a into a wall of carbon fiber on the penultimate lap, I mean, that was pretty crazy,” he said. “You couldn’t see anything.”
Leclerc has started on pole for the last four races in a row in Azerbaijan but hasn’t won any of them. “Not, obviously, another great day for the team,” was how he summed up Ferrari’s race.
Norris limited the damage to his championship chances of a poor starting position with quick early overtakes and smart strategy, before Perez and Sainz’s crash lifted him further up.
Norris may have started the race in defensive mode but instead ended up taking a further three points out of Verstappen’s lead, which still stands at a formidable 59 points with seven rounds of the championship remaining.
In a season when McLaren has challenged for the title despite strategy calls that have sometimes seemed confusing or counterproductive, converting second and 15th on the grid into first and fourth at the flag was a triumph.
A long first stint on hard tires meant Norris was able to first slow down Perez to help out Piastri, and fight Verstappen too.
Verstappen, who had stopped for tires, was left stuck behind Norris lap after lap and was eventually caught and passed for sixth by Russell. Norris stopped for fresh tires and hunted down Verstappen’s now off-the-pace car in the final laps before completing a pass that could play an outsize role in the title race.
Fernando Alonso was sixth for Aston Martin, while Alexander Albon took seventh for Williams.
Albon’s rookie teammate Franco Colapinto took eighth in only his second race in F1, becoming the first Argentinian driver to score points since Carlos Reutemann in 1982. The driver he replaced at Williams last month, American Logan Sargeant, hadn’t scored a point this season.
Lewis Hamilton was ninth after starting the race from the pit lane due to changing car parts, and 19-year-old Oliver Bearman — also in his second career F1 race — was 10th as a stand-in at Haas for the suspended Kevin Magnussen, beating his far more experienced teammate Nico Hulkenberg.
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