Baku once again demonstrated how difficult it can be to build a straightforward race around the Azerbaijan street circuit. Frédéric Vasseur had anticipated the problem before the start: with virtually no tyre degradation and a high probability of a Safety Car, the priority was to avoid constructing the entire Grand Prix around an overly rigid strategy.
George Russell had initially built a substantial advantage at the front, also benefiting from the queue that Oscar Piastri had created behind him. The situation gradually isolated the Mercedes in the lead and allowed George Russell to manage the race with a degree of comfort.
The Safety Car then erased that advantage, bunching the field back together and suddenly putting George Russell under pressure again. Max Verstappen switched to Soft tyres and was able to shadow George Russell after the restart, with the more favourable compound offering a potential opportunity to attack over the closing laps.
Mercedes traction keeps Max Verstappen behind George Russell
What ultimately protected George Russell from the late threat was primarily the exceptional traction of the Mercedes. On the exits of the slow corners, George Russell was able to build just enough of an advantage to prevent Max Verstappen from converting the extra grip of the Soft tyres into a genuine overtaking opportunity.
The result also produced an important statistical milestone. According to Formula 1’s official statistical count, Mercedes has now moved ahead of Ferrari in victories recorded by an engine manufacturer.
Kimi Antonelli loses downforce after contact as Isack Hadjar reaches the podium
Kimi Antonelli’s race was compromised by contact with a Haas at the restart. Mercedes estimated that Kimi Antonelli suffered floor damage worth around 10 points of downforce, with the resulting performance loss assessed at approximately three to four tenths of a second per lap.
Despite that handicap, Kimi Antonelli managed to close back onto Charles Leclerc in the final stages and forced the Ferrari driver to defend. Charles Leclerc resisted the pressure, although the Mercedes behind him was no longer operating at its full performance potential.
Isack Hadjar was another of the leading figures in the race. On his return, Isack Hadjar produced a very solid performance and secured a podium in a Grand Prix made particularly difficult by the neutralisations and repeated restarts.
Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari carried too much drag for Baku
For Ferrari, the weekend was considerably more difficult overall. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton raced with two different floor configurations, and the solution selected for Lewis Hamilton proved too heavily loaded for the specific demands of Baku. Ferrari had already been working through its aerodynamic compromises during practice, with the Baku FP3 analysis showing the progress and limitations of the SF-26 set-up.
Charles Leclerc retained the lighter floor specification that had already been used between Spa and Monza, with the aim of prioritising greater efficiency. Lewis Hamilton, by contrast, returned to the standard floor configuration at the end of FP3. That version was capable of generating more downforce, but it also came with higher aerodynamic resistance.
On a circuit such as Baku, that compromise carried a significant penalty. Lewis Hamilton’s SF-26 generated too much drag, particularly on the exceptionally long full-throttle section. The additional downforce produced by the floor did not generate enough of an advantage through the more technical sector to compensate for the efficiency loss on the straights.
The problem therefore left Lewis Hamilton with a car carrying too much aerodynamic load for the demands of the circuit. It also reinforced the question raised during the weekend over whether Ferrari had taken the wrong set-up direction in Baku. The straight-line consequences can also be explored through the ScuderiaFans F1 Top Speed Comparison.
Charles Leclerc’s lighter SF-26 still cannot close Ferrari’s performance gap
The comparison with Charles Leclerc was particularly revealing. With the lighter floor configuration, Charles Leclerc had an SF-26 that was better aligned with Baku’s efficiency requirements. Even that approach, however, was not enough to bring Ferrari back towards the fastest cars.
The underlying problem went beyond the aerodynamic configuration chosen for either driver. In the most representative race comparisons, the SF-26 was approximately six tenths of a second slower than Max Verstappen and around seven to eight tenths behind George Russell. The deficit was simply too large to attribute solely to the different compromises selected for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.
In pure performance terms, Ferrari therefore appeared closer to the struggling Alpine cars than to the leading group in Baku. The weakness was also consistent with the SF-26 limitations highlighted by the Azerbaijan telemetry.
Baku ultimately exposed two different problems for the Maranello team. With Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari also paid the price for a floor configuration that generated too much downforce and too much drag for the circuit. With Charles Leclerc, a solution better suited to Baku still could not disguise the SF-26’s more fundamental limitation: the overall amount of performance available compared with the fastest cars.
The next Grand Prix follows quickly, with Formula 1 returning to Malaysia and the demanding Sepang circuit. That venue should be considerably better suited to the SF-26, while Ferrari also waits for its fourth and final aerodynamic package of the season, scheduled to arrive in America.
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