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
Hamilton went through and hulk was following him. I am assuming Bearman put some kind of schoolboy move on hulk to prevent the overtake? We will see
Ok, just before starting lap 49 from P10 Nico radios that he has a puncture and thinks he hit the wall, the pitwall replies pretty quickly the pressures look ok. Right before he passes the pit entry he asks what to do and the pitwall quickly confirms the tire pressures are ok.
Out of turn 1 they again confirm good tire pressures and tell him after turn 2 mode push, which he says he is already in, and is almost immediately passed by Franco. They then radio about his Pit In button being on and he tells them he’s tried to turn it off but it’s not working, they tell him to press it again. About mid lap they radio that the car is all ok, 2 laps to go at the line.
The next radio comms are about the yellow/double yellow and he’s instructed to stay right. He does but hits a huge pile of debris and reports it. The next sign board shows green flags.
He continues on and says it’s going to be red flagged at almost the exact moment he’s overtaken by Lewis and Oliver. A few turns later he again reports he hit something big, the team says they are checking the front wing, and the VSC comes out.
He immediately starts beating the steering wheel and radios something I can’t make out back to the team. It’s something like “man how have they not like?.. No way…” And the team interrupts him with "Yeah, swell. "
From there the comms seemed to all be instructions from the team on where he needed to drive and updates about how long is left in the race. Until- about halfway through the final lap Nico maybe talks, but there is no audio from him through the F1TV replay, just the team saying “yeah copy that Nico” and then telling him to stay close to the delta time. The only team radio from then until the checkered flag is delta and gap updates from the team, nothing from Nico.
The cool down and in lap don’t seem to show anything, and the final audio is the team and Nico apologizing to each other and Nico commenting the irony being it was his best race there, etc.
I plan on watching the onboard shortly to see for myself but I’m assuming there will be talk about it if something happened.