Plenty of power, low drag and a stable rear end. That is what matters this year, and Mercedes is dominating with precisely those qualities even without major upgrades. Meanwhile, meaningful tyre degradation continues to be almost completely absent.
Baku provides a clear picture of Formula 1 in 2026
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix began in the rather uneventful fashion that has increasingly characterised the latest races of the 2026 championship, but two Safety Car periods eventually brought the finale to life. They added some tension as Max Verstappen launched his familiar attack behind an impeccable George Russell, who handled the pressure extremely well.
The two drivers gave Formula 1 fans several entertaining laps on a circuit that, from a technical point of view, offers relatively little variety. Almost every corner is taken at around 100 km/h or less, with many sharing similar characteristics and radii, interrupted by straight-line acceleration zones and the enormous flat-out section leading back towards the finish line.
It is a very specific exercise, almost elementary compared with some of the other circuits on the calendar. Yet that simplicity made Baku extremely useful in revealing what really matters in Formula 1 in 2026.
Mercedes has the right fundamentals even without major upgrades
The verdict was extremely clear. George Russell fully deserved his victory in a race where Mercedes once again demonstrated obvious technical superiority. Baku is probably one of the most extreme circuits on the calendar when it comes to the combined sensitivity to power and aerodynamic drag, two areas in which the Brackley car currently excels.
That advantage had already been visible when George Russell secured a dominant Baku pole position ahead of Charles Leclerc, and it remained evident throughout the Grand Prix.
Mercedes can also rely on an extremely solid rear end from both an aerodynamic and mechanical perspective. The ability to run the car at a greater ride height and with softer suspension settings helps generate exceptional traction while also minimising battery consumption. On a circuit such as Baku, the resulting advantage becomes enormous.
The numerous braking zones also allowed the cars to recover a substantial amount of electrical energy. The FIA therefore permitted a generous level of energy recovery, which only increased the differences between the teams. Mercedes appears to be the only team capable of exploiting situations with a large available recharge margin to the fullest.
Counter-intuitively, therefore, increasing the number of megajoules available per lap to every team can actually increase Mercedes’ advantage over its rivals rather than reduce it. The wider scale of the W17’s advantage can also be explored in this analysis of Mercedes’ 2026 dominance.
More traditional driving styles return to the fore
The abundance of available energy also meant that more traditional driving styles became effective again. Drivers could concentrate less on energy recovery and more on pure driving technique.
George Russell interpreted the entire weekend perfectly in this respect. Andrea Kimi Antonelli, by contrast, paid the price in qualifying for his aggressive corner-entry style with a significant mistake. Andrea Kimi Antonelli then produced an excellent recovery drive in the race, although he was unable to match the absolute performance level of his Mercedes team-mate.
The World Championship battle has not suddenly reopened unless what happened in Baku develops into a genuine trend. That makes what happens next weekend at Sepang particularly interesting.
Tyre degradation remains almost completely absent
Another increasingly recurring factor made the technical picture even clearer: tyre degradation was virtually non-existent. For the third consecutive race, the tyres demonstrated such longevity that, in theory, it was almost possible to cover the entire Grand Prix distance without any genuine need to make a pit stop.
At Baku, the Soft tyre was clearly above average in terms of performance, but Max Verstappen also pointed out over the radio that it was capable of completing more than half of the race without difficulty. The Hard compound was not used by anyone, not even for a single lap.
The tyre-management element therefore almost disappeared completely, turning the Grand Prix into something resembling a 50-lap qualifying session.
Normally, that is a tendency that can produce appealing racing from a pure-performance perspective. When it continues in such an extreme form across several consecutive races, however, it begins to become excessive. It also gives Mercedes another advantage while simultaneously removing some of the strengths possessed by its rivals.
Ferrari, for example, has repeatedly demonstrated a strong ability this season to preserve its tyres and maintain performance over long runs because it transfers relatively little energy into the tyres while operating with a high level of aerodynamic load. In recent races, that quality has simply not been required.
Red Bull, the ADUO question and an aerodynamic package that likes fixed parameters
The relative simplicity of Baku also helped Red Bull considerably. The repetitive nature of the corners made it much easier to find an effective set-up compromise and, above all, allowed the team to hide the balance difficulties that have emerged at circuits featuring a much wider variety of corner types.
The Milton Keynes engineers found an almost perfect aero-mechanical configuration. The car was competitive through the slow corners and extremely fast on the straights thanks to the combination of an effective Ford power unit and a chassis designed around particularly low drag levels.
It is important in this context to point out that ADUO measurements are certainly inadequate as a complete performance reference because they do not take the electrical component of the power units into account. However, at the two races defined most heavily by outright straight-line speed, Monza and Baku, Red Bull has consistently performed extremely well.
ADUO therefore remains an almost “legendary” reference point in several respects, including the possibility that there is still an underlying element of truth behind the figures.
Max Verstappen once again produced an excellent race, but Isack Hadjar also deserves particular recognition. Isack Hadjar delivered a superb comeback that ended with a fully deserved podium and showed excellent race awareness while running behind his team-mate. He understood the superior performance of his tyre, the potential of the car, the benefit of having overtaking assistance available and how best to manage the situation. It was an outstanding performance both in terms of driving and decision-making.
Compact field leaves McLaren with mistakes and questions
The relative simplicity of the set-up requirements and the absence of tyre degradation also helped compress the field. Apart from Mercedes, the gap between the leading cars and the midfield was noticeably smaller than at several other races.
Lando Norris, for example, struggled to find a suitable pit-stop window because even the Cadillacs towards the rear remained relatively close. The broader shifts between Ferrari and its main competitors can be followed through the Ferrari vs F1 Rivals statistics.
Turning specifically to McLaren, the Woking team probably had the potential to establish itself as the third-fastest force, although without an enormous advantage over Ferrari. The upgrades introduced on the MCL40 appear to have altered the car’s balance significantly, particularly under braking. That became especially apparent through the mistakes made by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri when braking for Turn 1.
Part of the difficulty probably still comes from the need to understand the new package properly, although the drivers themselves were not flawless either.
The collision between Lando Norris and Franco Colapinto then effectively destroyed the British driver’s race, while Oscar Piastri’s mistake completed a costly double non-score from a Constructors’ Championship perspective.
Oscar Piastri’s difficulty in recovering the lost positions must also be considered in the context of a field that was much more tightly packed than usual. Only Andrea Kimi Antonelli, driving the dominant Mercedes, managed to make significant progress through the order, and even his recovery was relatively difficult.
Ferrari’s problems all come to a head in Baku
At Maranello, Ferrari essentially did what it could. The final balance of the SF-26 was good, while Charles Leclerc drove an excellent race apart from the start, where everyone on the left-hand side of the grid lost positions.
Charles Leclerc held on to fourth place with the performance available to him, while Lewis Hamilton raced aggressively despite running a higher-downforce configuration. Lewis Hamilton was searching for tyre temperature, but that temperature never really arrived. Neither did the expected degradation, making the additional downforce Lewis Hamilton carried throughout the Grand Prix largely useless.
The contrasting choices followed Ferrari’s wider struggle to identify the best compromise around the Azerbaijan circuit, an issue that had already emerged during the team’s Baku FP3 work on deployment and SF-26 set-up.
The Ferrari rear end appeared slightly softer than it had on Friday, but Maranello continues to favour very low and stiff set-ups in an almost obsessive search for straight-line efficiency.
Everything ultimately leads back to the unavoidable elephant in the room: the engine.
On a circuit where almost every corner requires the drivers to accelerate from below 100 km/h with the steering wheel virtually straight, a lack of power becomes an enormous handicap. When the cars then remain almost completely flat-out for more than two kilometres after the final corner, the problem becomes impossible to disguise.
The power-unit situation had already been a major subject before the race, when Ferrari avoided a Baku grid penalty for Charles Leclerc and preserved the Monza ADUO-2 engine.
This is also why objectively evaluating the rest of the SF-26 becomes difficult. Ferrari’s car has a relatively wide operating window, but the repetitive nature of Baku’s corners prevented that quality from becoming a meaningful advantage.
Ferrari manages its tyres well, but there was effectively no degradation to manage. What remained was pure performance, and that is precisely where the power-unit limitation emerged most clearly.
The limitations around the rest of the lap had already become visible in the SF-26 telemetry analysis from the Azerbaijan weekend, reinforcing how difficult it was for Ferrari to compensate for the losses on the straights.
From that perspective, Charles Leclerc’s fourth place and Lewis Hamilton’s sixth, helped by McLaren effectively eliminating itself from contention, already represent more than Ferrari might reasonably have expected before the race.
The situation is complicated and makes it difficult to identify a genuine short-term solution. The SF-26 has certainly stopped progressing aerodynamically for some time. The most recent floor introduced at Zandvoort helped stabilise the rear of the car but did not generate a major performance step.
Ferrari’s broader development dilemma has also become increasingly evident through its repeated search for the right balance between load and efficiency, with the team previously facing questions over whether it had taken the wrong set-up direction in Baku as Mercedes opened a large advantage.
The new aerodynamic package planned for Austin could represent an important step forward in terms of downforce and overall performance, but another paradox exists here. Unless Ferrari produces something exceptional, increasing downforce also means increasing drag.
The SF-26 would become faster through the corners, but without a sufficiently competitive power unit it becomes increasingly difficult to exploit that extra aerodynamic load without paying an even greater price on the straights, particularly if tyre degradation continues to remain absent.
That trade-off will be one of the key areas to watch as Ferrari continues developing the SF-26, with further updates and analysis available through the Ferrari technical analysis section.
Baku showed what matters in F1 2026 – now attention turns to Sepang
For all its simplicity, Baku may therefore have produced the clearest picture yet of Formula 1 in 2026. Power, low drag, rear stability, traction and efficient energy use were all rewarded heavily, while strengths linked to tyre management carried very little value when degradation was almost absent.
The good news is that Formula 1 races at Sepang next Sunday. It is a genuine, complete and complex circuit with far greater technical variety, one that should finally bring many more characteristics of both the cars and the drivers back into play.
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