Azerbaijan Grand Prix Facts About As Interesting As A Punch To The Face During Toothache

Imposing, unabashedly quick, and a one of a kind street course that is as dramatic as it is pulsating, the next halt in F1 is the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. It is here where legends have been made and crashes have taken the best car out of the action. The soon-to-begin 2024 contest could well see another fast-paced and high-intensity battle at Baku but which facts pertaining to the F1 race seem to stood out over the years?

Let us dive down the inside and get done with some!

Driver with most Azerbaijan Grand Prix wins is one who, is nowadays, mostly trolled

Love him, hate him, you can’t ignore him, while he most certainly can ‘defend’ on the track. Well, Checo Perez is his name and being solid at Baku, the checkered home of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, is his game.

Perez is the only driver from the current grid to have won here at Azerbaijan twice and even those wins weren’t successive victories.

There’s something about the 3.7 mile-long track that seems to work well for the Mexican driver, probably someone who likely isn’t Helmut Marko‘s favourite F1 driver.

Drivers who’d hate having a DNF here at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

As on date, seventeen drivers have registered a DNF in the 2024 Formula 1 season. If it must be said, the likes of Russell, Guanyu, Albon and the likes have endured the year, instead of enjoying it.

Which is why the forthcoming 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix will be an important contest for these drivers. This despair-riddled lot, by the way, also includes, a certain Pierre Gasly, who’s not had a great year in 2024 (at least, up to this point).

So while these four drivers would be hoping for a much better finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix of 2024, it’s not like the usual frontrunners, Red Bull, McLaren wouldn’t hope for a fine result this year.

Can we, therefore, expect to see a gala effort from what has, until recently been, a fiery trinity, including Norris, Piastri and Verstappen?

As Kimi, not Antonelli, but Raikkonen, would say, “Bwoah, let’s see what happens in the race!”

The first winner of the race at Baku is a former F1 driver

Brittany to Sir Lewis Hamilton’s fanboys, and a proper world champion to the rest of the world; it was Nico Rosberg who won the maiden Formula 1 Grand Prix held at Baku. But back in 2016, it wasn’t known as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix; it was known as the European Grand Prix.

Competing in equal machinery as that of the great Sir Lewis Hamilton, the German-Finnish driver eclipsed close competition to emerge on the top step of the Baku podium.

He was dominant, confident and unapologetically fast, a bit like the track designed by the great Hermann Tilke himself. And that was that; the former Mercedes driver called time on his career after completing what he called was a long cherished goal: to win the drivers’ title in 2016.

Not even Max Verstappen has registered consecutive race wins at Baku

Max Verstappen, still very much in the lead of the current drivers’ championship, has won at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on only one single occasion.

Not that it should please the Lewis Hamilton fan-club for even the great Briton, a seven-time world champion, and a titan of the sport, has won at Baku just once.

Having said that, Max’s predicament at Baku has been underlined by the fact that he’s found much to his chagrin several accident-bound contests, and when not, then events where his Red Bull just wasn’t fast enough.

For instance, in 2018, Hamilton, world champion that year, was in a league of his own. In 2019, the Mercedes cars were rapier than the Red Bulls and Bottas was performing on a very high level. The Finn took the victory five years back in the day.

But as seen lately, given Verstappen is desperately in search of a win, the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix could be an even bigger event from a Red Bull perspective than what one thinks.

There’s going to be the technically demanding parts of the circuit and not to forget, Lando Norris. Can Max best the rest?

The lap record at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix belongs to a driver who’s yet to win here at Baku

It was back in 2019, where Charles Leclerc, then in his first season at the Scuderia family set the fastest lap at the Baku City Circuit, which, needless to say, is the home to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. At 1:43:009, the Monegasque set a belter of a lap that caught the eye of Ferrari’s opponents as well as his then teammate, Sebastian Vettel.

No one else since Charles’s brilliant 2019 effort has gone on to better the blistering lap time in a Ferrari, which if you think about it, is an achievement that came (over) half a decade ago.

However, given the rocket-ship like pace being set by both the McLaren drivers, as fervently seen in 2024, it’s a classic case of never say never in Formula 1.

Let us see what the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix brings to the table.