Mark Hughes: How each of F1's top four teams could win in Baku

There was a whole lot of promise on the first day of Formula 1 practice in Baku. If you are a fan of Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren or Mercedes there is a lot of reason to believe it could be your weekend.

Obviously that’s going to leave three sets of fans disappointed come Sunday. But for now, they can each dream. There’s a case to be made for each of them. So here they are:

Ferrari

Ferrari is traditionally great around here, as is Charles Leclerc. So it isn’t really all that surprising that he should be heading the FP2 times. That he should be so after very little running – because he’d crashed in FP1 after setting what was then the fastest time – just shores up Ferrari’s case even more.

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Into slow, sharp, short corners it’s always been the best car. Hence its domination at Monaco. There is something in its DNA which makes it extremely agile – a trait that there way back even when it was otherwise uncompetitive. Allied to that Ferrari has chosen a very low wing setting, far lower than Red Bull’s or McLaren’s. 

Even before the DRS zone on the main straight, Leclerc was travelling 10km/h faster than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull on their respective fastest laps. The Red Bull’s continuing strong DRS boost claws back some of that deficit in the DRS zone and is generally faster through the tight twists. But the point is that, despite carrying a smaller wing, the Ferrari is still competitive in the slow turns because of that great agility. 

Leclerc’s running and the delay to the rebuild error from his crash meant he was much later than the others when he did his qualifying simulation, taking advantage of the grippier track. So we should take his fastest time with a slight pinch of salt. The other possible cloud on Ferrari’s horizon is how that low wing setting impacts upon relative race pace. 

FP2 long runs

The relatively few number of race sim laps it’s possible to fit in on a Friday mean that the tyre deg picture is not clear. But there’s great encouragement to be taken from the fact that Carlos Sainz’s run on the medium C4 tyre was faster than anyone else’s (albeit by a tiny margin).

“It’s very tight,” said Leclerc, “but it’s also very difficult to see with the different engine modes of everybody. It’s one of the tracks that I quite like and we’ve been pretty quick in the past, but that doesn’t mean it will be the case for tomorrow. We still have to work on the car, there’s plenty of work to do, to improve, there’s the driving to be improved a little bit, because I was still taking my references a little bit in FP2, but, again, we are fast. That’s a good thing and hopefully there’s more to come tomorrow.”

Red Bull

Red Bull is back in play here. The RB20 is a way more competitive car than was the case in Monza. How much of that is down to its revised floor and diffuser and how much to the circuit characteristics is impossible to know, but what it has in common with the Ferrari is its suitability to short corners.

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There is also a relatively small spread of corner speeds here, so the car’s inherent difficulty in getting a workable balance window between low and high speed doesn’t punish it so much.

Sergio Perez has actually led the way for the team as Verstappen has concentrated on trying to iron out a power-on understeer trait. “Yes, but it's also the track,” says Verstappen. “It's very slippery, a lot of 90-degree corners so if you have a tiny lock, sometimes you just hold the brake to not hit the wall or whatever just out of precaution… so we just need to get the balance together a bit more and then I'm quite confident that we can be competitive.”

But this is all happening at very high grip levels, meaning that the car is quick even in this state. The team is using the relatively big wing it raced at Spa, but the beam wing has been substantially cut back for here. 

Perez loves this place and had the edge on Verstappen here last year. With some further fine-tuning in the Verstappen garage, there’s every reason to believe both Red Bulls are going to be contending for pole – and from there, their relatively big wing will be a valuable tyre deg asset. 

Mercedes

A tricky day for the team, given that George Russell missed much of the second session as a precautionary power unit change was made to his car. Russell admitted his lack of running was impacting upon his confidence around this place and he was struggling to get the tyres into the correct temperature window.

But every time Lewis Hamilton was out on track on the soft tyres, he was contending for the fastest time.

Hamilton was fastest in the long runs – but he was the only one doing it on the hard tyre, which looks to have an advantage over the medium on a race stint. Mercedes is definitely in the ballpark and in terms of the chosen wing level, it's somewhere in between Ferrari and Red Bull. 

McLaren

McLaren traditionally runs a conservative programme on Friday and Lando Norris’ qually sim lap was baulked by Pierre Gasly who was trying to get out of the way but was suffering a battery problem in the Alpine which made it difficult for him.

So not too much should be read into the headline times which have Oscar Piastri and Norris only fifth and 17^th.  

But still. This doesn’t look as strong a performance as usual from the team. The car’s advantage is usually amplified the longer the corner goes on – so Baku is not playing to its strengths. On Friday it was merely competitive rather than ‘F1’s fastest car’. But with the right calls and a co-ordinated qualifying effort, that could all change. 

“I think it has been a decent day,” said Piastri. “It’s a bit hard to know at the moment, with the track evolving so much still, but the pace seems in the ballpark… I think at the moment everyone the top four teams look good. Our long runs seemed quite competitive.

"Some people could put together some big laps [in qually simulation] and if you hook it up it really makes a big difference, so that’s going to be the name of the game tomorrow.”

That and the tow which is worth a lot around here if it can be co-ordinated right. This could be where Piastri is used to give his team-mate some valuable help.