Verstappen would dominate the Azerbaijan Grand Prix while Norris failed to make significant gains in the championship after Piastri’s retirement on lap 1.
The opening lap had major ramifications for the championship as Oscar Piastri would start off by falling to last place after jumping the start, before then locking up at turn 5, crashing into the barriers and being forced to retire from the race.
Lando Norris now had a great opportunity to make significant gains in the championship, having lost a significant amount of points after retiring in Zandvoort. Unfortunately for him, he would give himself more work to do after dropping to 8th place on the opening lap.
Norris would go on to fall to 9th place once the race resumed, getting jumped by Leclerc, though he would be able to retake 8th by the end of the lap after overtaking Hadjar, who was also overtaken by Leclerc.
George Russell was struggling to overtake Tsunoda, with the Red Bull driver putting in a strong defence. Their squabbling was starting to bring Leclerc, Norris and Hamilton closer to their fight, but Russell would finally find a way past on lap 10.
Overtaking was proving to be rather difficult for the drivers in the early portions of the race. Alongside Norris’ struggles overtaking Leclerc, Antonelli was struggling to overtake Lawson, Russell was struggling to overtake Antonelli, and Leclerc was struggling to overtake Tsunoda.
Alex Albon would make contact with Franco Colapinto on lap 18, with the Williams driver going for a gap that didn’t really exist on the inside of turn 5. Albon would break his front wing end plate, and Colapinto’s tyres appear heavily flat spotted, but both were able to continue. Albon would also get a 10 second time penalty from the incident.
Leclerc would pit at the end of lap 19, looking to gain an undercut to try and gain on Tsunoda ahead and protect himself from Norris behind.
Antonelli had pit one lap prior to try and get the undercut on Lawson, who would himself pit at the end of lap 20, where it would be the latter who initially came out on top. However, as the two came back onto the start finish straight, Antonelli would finally be able to overtake the Lawson.
Sainz had asked his team to not allow him to get undercut by Russell, who was putting in good work after having clean air with Antonelli’s and Lawson’s out stops. The team would then go on to pit him on lap 28, where he came out into a nice pocket of clear air.
McLaren had opted to keep Norris out for a long time in order to build up a significant tyre delta to Leclerc and Lawson. He would finally come into the pits on lap 38, but for the second race running he would have a slow stop, coming out roughly two seconds behind the pair.
Russell’s pace in clear air was very strong, to the point where even though Sainz had gone for the undercut, Russell would jump him for second place after the round of pit stops concluded.
Norris would finally overtake Leclerc on lap 41, climbing to 7th place. Tsunoda and Lawson were within reach, though anything more than fifth place looked like it would be out of reach.
Lawson was very much at the head of a DRS train, with Tsunoda, Norris and Hamilton all unable to make any moves on one another. In the end, it would finish with these drivers still in formation, despite a late attack from Norris onto Tsunoda on the final lap.
Verstappen would end up with a dominant win over the rest of the field, where he would be joined by George Russell and Carlos Sainz on the podium, who gave Williams their first podium from a full race since the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
As a result of his 7th place finish, Norris would only gain six points on Piastri, meaning the gap between the two is now 25 points.
The next race is the Singapore Grand Prix, which takes place on October 5th.
