Charles Leclerc and Nyck de Vries are both facing questions about their futures after Baku... F1 CharlesLeclerc NyckdeVries Formula1
Sergio Perez claimed his second victory of the 2023 Formula 1 season in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix after taking the lead from Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen during a Safety Car period.
Verstappen’s failure to overcome Leclerc, never mind his team-mate, was easily explained away by the gaping hole in his sidepod following his first-lap collision with George Russell, but did that damage potentially mask the true issue at play on his side of the garage? The fact that Verstappen has qualified at the front at each of the last three sprint weekends – P2 in Brazil and pole in Austria and now Baku – confirms that he can quite easily coax a competitive time out of a sprint-spec Red Bull over a single lap.
The use of the royal ‘we’ was a bit rich considering it was acknowledged by Red Bull that Perez’s downfall in Australia was of his own making, but pointed to a certain truth. If he is to achieve anything of significance in a Ferrari currently short of F1’s frontrunners, Leclerc has to go places others either can’t or just don’t need to tread.
It has been rumoured since last year that Mercedes had identified Leclerc as the eventual successor to Hamilton – a usually impeccable source made reference to a pre-contract agreement of some description already being in place – with both parties increasingly open about their fondness for each other in Baku.
How would Alonso get along with Lance Stroll? If the two-time World Champion came in and destroyed the boss’s son on track, how might team owner Lawrence respond? And just who would be brave enough to mention Austin 2022, when Stroll’s sudden move on the back straight sent his future team-mate flying through the air at speed?
During the race in Baku came more signs of this surprisingly productive partnership, Stroll radioing the team to reassure Alonso that he would not attack as they entered tyre-saving mode.With drag one of the few obvious weaknesses of the 2023 Aston Martin package, Azerbaijan was always likely to be a struggle for the green cars with an intermittent DRS problem across the weekend only exacerbating their straight-line deficit.
Dropped from McLaren’s junior scheme in 2019, he was overlooked by Williams as George Russell’s successor in late 2021 with the Mercedes customer team overlooking the Mercedes-backed driver to instead sign the Red Bull-affiliated Alex Albon. De Vries has been unfortunate at times – an engine change in final practice in Jeddah left him woefully unprepared for qualifying – but a number of rookie mistakes, including two more over the Baku weekend, were not what was promised by the driver who enjoyed such a composed debut at Monza.
What of the teenage F1 obsessive who has watched each episode of Drive to Survive at least three times and counts a signed mini helmet among their prized possessions? They were all in school. Among all the talk about “THREE DAYS OF COMPETITIVE ACTION” in Baku – what failed to be mentioned was that one of those days, with the outcome of the sprint race no longer setting the grid for Sunday, was a total irrelevance.
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