Lapping Baku with Valtteri Bottas

One of the newer events on the Formula 1 calendar, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has earned itself a reputation as a race that can deliver chaos across its previous eight editions. One driver who has seen both sides of that is Valtteri Bottas, and the 2019 race winner is your guide for a lap of Baku.

“I have good and bad memories of Baku – remember the last-lap puncture when leading in 2018!

“For me, what makes this place so special is it's always a really unpredictable race. Quite often, it's very entertaining. Lots of things happening – yellow flags, safety cars, and it's just hard to predict what's going to happen next. That's exciting.

“And the track itself, you know, for a street circuit, it's quite high speed. And it has the longest flat-out section. So that also means slipstreaming and overtaking is good.

Bottas got the balance right en route to taking victory for Mercedes in 2019. Jerry Andre/Getty Images

“It's definitely not one of the more difficult tracks on the circuit – there's no really proper high-speed corners. All the high-speed corners, they're flat out. But it's mostly 90-degree corners, with some slow sections like the castle, so it’s a technical track.

“It's bumpy as well. And it’s a street circuit, and with some of the wide lines there's difference in the grip in different places, so it’s one of the more technical ones.

“It's pretty unique, I would say. Going down that long straight, sometimes it feels like never-ending! You see the buildings and stuff, so it's pretty cool. The middle sector or the castle section, there it feels more like a normal street track, but I would say that last stretch is quite special.

“The only annoying thing here in Turn 1 is that quite often you arrive with cold brakes. So the initial bite of the brakes is never quite 100% – that's why it makes it even more difficult to find the optimal braking point for Turn 1.

“The key section for me is the last sector. It's normally a bit more exposed to the wind, that last proper corner at Turn 16 before coming out to the long straight. And the corner before that – Turn 15 – features downhill, quite tricky braking. It's hard to put the car in a completely straight line for the braking. So those last two corners, you can lose or gain quite a bit.

The wild mix of new and old in Baku is matched by the combo of long, fast straights and tight, slow corners. Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

“In the race, normally it's really dominated by the rear degradation. We've had some races with bad graining issues and it's normally quite hard to get the rear to front balance right in terms of the wear profile. So as a driver, you also need to change your driving a bit.

“You can definitely try and use the front tires a bit more and play with the setup, but that’s going to be the same thing. If it's not hot, you tend to struggle with front tires being on the cooler side on the surface, especially under braking. So with the setup, you want to try and find that right balance, but that tends to be the clear direction that it is quite rear deg-dominated.

“It's always a compromise with the downforce level here, but it really depends how much confidence you want to feel in the corners – with more downforce – and how competitive you want to be in the race, fighting other cars, with less downforce. So it's not easy on that sense. But I would say the biggest thing is probably the mechanical balance instead of the aerodynamic side.

“I’ve always enjoyed it. Like I said, I’ve had had good memories and horrible memories, but it’s always exciting racing. And normally, I feel like we've done quite well here.”

AT A GLANCE
Race distance: 51 laps/190.9 miles
2024 pole time: 1m41.365s (Charles Leclerc, Ferrari)
2024 winner: Oscar Piastri, McLaren-Mercedes
Pirelli tire allotment: Pirelli is bringing its softest trio of 2025 compounds for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which is a step softer than last year. In fact, the C6 is back as the Soft, having already been used in Imola, Monaco and Montreal. The C5 will be the Medium and the C4 the Hard.

On a street circuit with low levels of grip and wear, bringing the same selection as in 2024 would inevitably have led to a one-stop strategy. At least this way, considering that this year’s range suffers much less from graining, it opens up the possibility of a two-stop strategy. Moreover, it is clear that this year, most recently at Monza, the teams and drivers have become adept at managing the tires well, so that the race is unlikely to see very different strategies. Although it’s a street track, Baku has some very long straights where the cars hit very high top speeds that place significant vertical loads on the tires.

QATAR AIRWAYS AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX WEEKEND SCHEDULE (all times ET):

Friday, September 19

4:25am - 5:30am - First Practice, ESPNU

7:55am - 9:00am - Second Practice, ESPNU

Saturday, September 20

4:25am - 5:30am - Third Practice, ESPN2

7:55am - 9:00am - Qualifying, ESPN2

Sunday, September 21

8:55am - 11:00am - Azerbaijan Grand Prix (51 laps or 120 minutes), ESPN