This Saturday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the 10th running of the Baku street race, fires the starting gun on a frantic final phase of the season.
With nine grands prix scheduled in just 11 weekends — Middle Eastern rounds pending — what happens this weekend will set a trajectory that will be difficult to redirect before the end of the season.
A driver who generates some momentum this weekend could be impossible to stop before the end of the year.
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And a driver who fumbles in Baku might find themselves unstoppably spiralling.
Just ask Oscar Piastri.
The Australian was on top of the world arriving in Baku last season, with a comfortable world championship lead and the wind seemingly in his sails.
But the worst weekend of his sporting life completely changed the complexion of the campaign, and by the end of the year he’d lost his title chance.
They say the speeds are higher in the land of fire. So are the stakes.
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CAN PIASTRI FIND REDEMPTION?
Piastri has been at his best and worst in Baku.
His victory in 2024 was sublime. After picking Charles Leclerc’s pocket to take the lead with a last-of-the-late-brakers move into the first turn, he defended superbly for the rest of the race to absorb the Monegasque’s pressure and take what even to date is his most impressive victory.
The Piastri that turned up one year later couldn’t have looked more different.
He crashed out of qualifying. He jumped the start. He crashed out on lap 1. He left with no points.
“Love-hate,” is how he described his relationship with the high-speed street track.
“I think probably my best race ever has been at this track and probably my worst race ever has been at this track.
“It’s always eventful, which I know.
“Hopefully this year is more like 2024.”
But the context for Piastri’s weekend is greater than just the wild form swings at this circuit over the last two years.
He’s a driver under pressure to close the gap to teammate Lando Norris.
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He was belted by his teammate in Spain, where he was almost 0.5s slower in qualifying. It’s the second time in four rounds he’s been blown away by such a large single-lap margin and the ninth time in the last 11 rounds that he’s been outpaced in qualifying.
Though these big-margin weekends are outliers — on average Piastri and Norris are more closely matched — there have been enough of them to characterise the Australian’s season as he grapples to match his driving style to this generation of car.
But a breakthrough in Baku is a big ask, particularly given it’s unclear whether the McLaren will suit this circuit.
On paper it shouldn’t. Baku demands high aerodynamic efficiency — that is, a low-drag car — which is one of McLaren’s key weaknesses this season. The MCL40 also doesn’t love the slow, short corners that dominate much of the lap.
But the team was unexpectedly competitive in Madrid, including through the parts of the track that share some of these characteristics, and now McLaren is saying its car has “an increasingly competitive operating window”.
The missing ingredient, then, is confidence for Piastri.
“I think it’s always a big confidence track, and obviously you need to push the limits a lot,” he said. “It’s quite a rare combination of a street circuit with so many massive braking zones.
“We talk about kind of spirals or snowballs, and we’ve seen it time and time again, but it can go both ways.
“You gain confidence and it unlocks one thing, that unlocks the next, that unlocks the next, and all of a sudden you’ve gone a lot quicker. And it goes the opposite way as well.”
Which way will it go for Piastri this season?
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BAKU SPECIALIST LECLERC ON PENALTY CUSP
Only Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez have multiple wins in nine years of racing in Azerbaijan, with both having triumphed twice.
The story couldn’t be more different in qualifying, however. Charles Leclerc is the only multiple pole-getter, and he’s taken top spot in qualifying four times, a 44.4 per cent hit rate.
Despite never converting to victory — largely thanks to his car — Leclerc is arguably the most formidable force in Baku.
There’s something about this circuit that just clicks for him — that suits the way he manipulates the car to rotate through short corners and that suits his comfort taking risks between the walls.
“The secret to any city track is commitment and how much you’re willing to commit on a track like this,” he said. “It’s always a balance between the risks you want to take.
“For me it’s just commitment and precision as well. To use even those two, three, five centimetres to get closer to the wall makes a big difference on tracks like this.
“It all goes back to how much you are committing yourself and going into Q3. That’s what I particularly enjoy of these tracks.”
But the fact Leclerc is almost certain to be a factor this weekend — even if it’s despite his car — makes the next question only more difficult.
Is this the weekend to take an engine penalty?
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Ferrari revealed this week that the engine Leclerc crashed in Monza is still usable and has been put back in rotation after he used an older unit in Spain — particularly good news given it was an upgraded one.
But the bad news is that he’s still marginal on engine lifespan and will almost certainly have to take a penalty sooner rather than later.
“Baku should be quite suitable,” Frédéric Vasseur said in Spain.
A new engine this weekend would send Leclerc to the back of the grid at a weekend he should be fighting at the front — but with a fresh engine at a power-sensitive circuit and with his natural Baku nous, this could also be the best chance for him to minimise the damage of such a penalty.
While no-one could possibly expect a repeat of Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s back-to-front victory in Monza after his engine penalty, this is the sort of track and Leclerc is the sort of driver to make similarly big gains.
The Monegasque was tight-lipped about whether Ferrari would commit to a new engine this weekend.
“I don’t know if that’s realistic for us if we will have to take the penalty,” he said. “I won’t go too much into the detail on what’s the plan and what engine we will use or not, because that’s still something strategic for us and we don’t want to give that away.”
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HADJAR’S INJURY COMEBACK
If you had free choice of where to make a comeback from a wrist injury, the twisty and risky Baku circuit probably wouldn’t be near the top of the list.
But that’s the way the cards have fallen for Isack Hadjar, who’s returning from three rounds on the bench after fracturing his wrist in a training accident during the mid-season break.
“It’s definitely a challenging track to come back to, but I’m excited,” he said.
“It’s still going to be painful for a while, but now it’s going to be six weeks soon, and it says that it’s strong enough at the moment to resist the tensions.
“I had a test on the sim; it went well. It’s a similar environment to the cockpit — it’s actually, if anything, nearly identical — so if it’s fine on the sim, with the adrenaline on track and everything, I think I should be okay.
His pain will be dulled somewhat by having been confirmed at Red Bull Racing for 2027 in the lead-up to this weekend’s race. Though he was never thought to be under serious threat, Liam Lawson did a reasonable job in his absence, and rookie Arvid Lindblad has been impressive this season — and Red Bull Formula 2 star Nikola Tsolov is leading the junior championship, meaning there was no shortage of alternatives.
Though he lamented how “flat and boring” normal life was during his recovery, he did say it was valuable to get Lawson’s feedback on this year’s car, with the Kiwi bringing a fresh perspective to the inconsistent and unpredictable RB22.
“I think it’s good to have a driver that’s actually driving another car coming into ours,” he said. “Of course the Red Bull is superior to the RB, but it’s good to hear from him about the weaknesses of our car, if there are any.
“It’s interesting in that way. I won’t go into details, but it’s very good feedback for us. He’s done very well.”
Red Bull Racing historically is the most successful team at his circuit by wins, with Verstappen claiming two for himself, including in a dominant performance last season.
Hadjar, though, was keeping expectations in check for his first race back.
“The car is competitive, and I just want to be in the mix, in the fight with the guys ahead,” he said.
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WILLIAMS ALL-IN ON SEASON-SAVING UPGRADE
Further down the field, this is a significant weekend for Williams, which has brought a major upgrade to Baku.
The historic British team scored a podium here last year after a sensational front-row start for Carlos Sainz in his first season with the team. It was one of the moments that reset expectations for Williams ahead of 2026, which the team had long earmarked as its chance to step out of the midfield.
Instead it’s taken a big step backwards. It was late to deliver its car to pre-season testing after development delays, and when it hit the track, it was overweight and uncompetitive.
Baku was long ago pegged as the race at which it would bring an upgrade that would reset its season and put it back on an upwards trajectory, including with a new and lighter chassis, but the closer the date has got, the more the update has been talked down — especially after Aston Martin’s significant step forward in Hungary, albeit with its Honda engine still holding it back.
Alex Albon, though, was optimistic the team could take an immediate step with just one key change of the multi-part upgrade.
“We’ve been carrying a substantial weight penalty this year so far, and I think going into this weekend we’ve got ballast on the car,” he said. “There’s a big swing.
“The weight itself is obviously a big thing, and weight is a guarantee in terms of lap time, so that’s why we know it will be a good step, regardless of how the aero side performs.”
Williams was rumoured to be overweight by as much as 30kg at the start of the year. With the rough rule being that every kilogram costs 0.01s per lap, the British team was shipping something like 0.9s per lap through weight alone.
Weight has been chipped off progressively this year, but with the chassis being a major and expensive culprit, the restraints of the cost cap have meant it won’t be until this weekend that the car gets underneath the weight limit.
Combined with other aero upgrades, some of which the team has described as being particularly innovative, Albon believes Williams can be returning to fight at the front of the midfield.
“I think in any other year it would have been a massive [upgrade], but because of this year, the way it’s going, it’s not only going to get us back into contention with that group.”
It’s important to remember that Williams set this as its baseline after last season’s fifth-place championship finish. By its own standards, this year is almost certain to end in failure.
It’s critical, though, that the team can show genuine fight with this upgrade. Having missed the mark this year, the stakes for 2027 are incredibly high for the team and for principal James Vowles. Some of that pressure will be eased with a big step this weekend; another misfire and suddenly 2027 will feel like the last roll of the dice.
Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2026 schedule (AEST)
Thursday: FP1 at 6:30pm, FP2 at 10pm.
Friday: FP3 at 6:30pm, qualifying at 10pm.
Saturday: Race at 9pm.