Azerbaijan GP:

Eventful Friday for the Team in Baku

The second double-header after the summer break takes F1 to Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit.

The demanding street circuit presented the drivers and teams with a number of challenges on the first day of running. Several cars had to use the emergency exit during both sessions and FP1 was halted three times by red flags.

Lewis set his fastest lap time of 1:43.550 on his third push lap in FP2 with the Soft tyres to end the session in P3. He was separated by just 0.066 seconds from Charles Leclerc in P1 and 0.060 seconds from Sergio Perez in P2. George set his fastest time in the final minutes of the session to finish in P9.

There was a clear trend in the lap times between the long straight in the final sector and the slower corners in the first two sectors with the Silver Arrow losing a couple of tenths in the first sector but gaining them back on the long straight.

After FP1 was interrupted by the red flags, Lewis concentrated on gaining experience with the Hard tyres in the second session of the day. He was happy with the balance of the car. This was followed by a run on the Soft tyres before returning to the Hard compound for longer runs.

George joined the action midway through the second session after the team had worked on his car. Like Lewis, he started FP2 with a run on the Hard tyres. Because of the red flags in FP1, he had been unable to do any long runs on the Medium tyres. After his 12-lap long run on the Hard tyres, George switched to the Soft compound and finished FP2 on it.

Lewis Hamilton

Today was a really good day. I enjoyed it from the start as the car felt strong from the first laps on track. We made some positive incremental steps on the set-up. There was nothing we had to come back on, and we continued to build throughout.

Pace wise, we didn’t complete a huge number of laps on our long run in FP2. We will have to do some comparisons tonight therefore to see where our relative speed is. Our usual competitors looked strong, but I think we are there or thereabouts. That is encouraging and was our hope coming into this weekend. We will stay cautious and vigilant though. We will work hard tonight to try and find more gains and see what we can do in qualifying tomorrow.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Lewis had two decent sessions and finished the day happy with the car. His pace also looked sensible although we know the areas we've got to work on. Overall, we're pleased with how his weekend has started. As has been the case in recent races, it looks very tight at the front in terms of single lap, so we'll be working hard overnight to find every bit of lap time.

In comparison to Lewis, George had a more challenging day. He wasn't very happy with the balance of the car in FP1, so we spent that session trying to improve it. Shortly after FP1 finished, we spotted an issue with the power unit that led us to take the cautious approach of swapping it out for FP2. That unfortunately cost him 25 minutes of valuable track time and whilst we got to run both tyres, the programme was compromised. We'll be aiming to recover some of the lost ground with George tomorrow in FP3.

2024 Azerbaijan GP FP2 Result

2024 Azerbaijan GP FP1 Result