Australian driver Oscar Piastri took an impressive victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday, winning enough points that his team McLaren also took the lead in the constructors’ world championship, surpassing Red Bull which has won that title for the last two years.
It was an assured performance from the 23-year-old who took his second ever race win and consolidated his status as a rising star within Formula One. Meanwhile, his teammate Lando Norris who had started in 15th place on the grid after botching qualifying, salvaged his race weekend with a fourth place finish.
Crucially, Norris somehow finished ahead of Max Verstappen in fifth, closing the gap between them once more though he still trails the Dutchman by 59 points in the hunt for the drivers’ world championship with a maximum of 206 points still up for grabs.
“I tried at the start of the race to get in front but once I dropped out of DRS I just didn’t have the pace,” Piastri said afterwards in his post-race interview. “After the stop, I thought we were pretty close again and I felt like we had some extra grip and I had to go for it because I knew if I didn’t get past at the start of the stint, I was never going to get past.
“So I went for a pretty big lunge but managed to pull it up and hung on for dear life for the next 35 laps … That definitely goes down as one of the better races of my career.”
He took the lead about a third of the way into the race, ambushing polesitter Charles Leclerc with a brilliant lunge on the inside to which the Ferrari driver couldn’t respond. They remained locked in a tight battle for much of the race, Piastri only pulling away in the final laps as Leclerc’s tires degraded.
The Monegasque driver, however, clung onto second place as his Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez tussled for position behind him and crashed into the wall, causing the race to end under a virtual safety car.
Mercedes’ George Russell finished in third as a consequence, while Perez and Sainz were forced to abandon the race.
“McLaren and Oscar have done an exceptional job and done better than us,” Leclerc said afterwards in his post-race interview. “A huge shame for Carlos on the last laps, hopefully everyone is OK and obviously not a great day for the team.”