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McLaren now leads the 2024 Formula 1 constructors’ championship after Oscar Piastri’s win and Lando Norris’s charge to fourth in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, coupled with Sergio Perez’s collision with Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen’s poor weekend.
With it all coming amid McLaren’s declaration that it would make Piastri support Norris when necessary plus Red Bull introducing an upgrade designed to start solving its big problems, what do the events of Baku mean for the title fight from here?
Here are our team’s immediate thoughts:
VERSTAPPEN GOT AWAY WITH IT AGAIN
Ben Anderson
This was another example of Verstappen getting away with one in the drivers’ championship ‘battle’. He was absolutely there for the taking this weekend, but the ‘wrong’ McLaren won, so Verstappen took barely any damage.
And this time it absolutely wasn’t the fault of McLaren, which actually executed probably its most impressive grand prix of the season so far considering the pace deficit it appeared to be carrying to Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes on Friday.
Piastri was superb and exacted exquisite revenge on Charles Leclerc for Monza. Norris drove a brilliant race too - also playing a crucial role in Piastri’s victory by delaying Perez and helping Piastri avoid the dreaded ‘undercut’ at the pitstops.
McLaren now leads the constructors’ championship by 20 points and that is a fully merited reward for its incredible development curve - and having two top-quality drivers available to capitalise on that progress.
Red Bull will be gently encouraged by the fact Perez was right in the mix until the crash with Sainz, but at the same time it has to be of deep concern that this latest floor upgrade only appeared to benefit its slower driver.
Verstappen agrees the car is overall better than it was, but his RB20 was jumping around at the rear, not turning in and not slowing down properly. Maybe it was anomalous to Baku, but that’s two races in a row now he’s been nowhere near the podium, and his winless run now extends back seven races…
What happened to Norris in Q1 was just plain bad luck but even so, the way this race ultimately played out for McLaren and Piastri, this has to go down as another major missed opportunity for Norris to really turn up the heat on Verstappen.
A BIG INTRA-TEAM TWIST FOR RED BULL
Scott Mitchell-Malm
I remain sceptical about there being a drivers’ championship fight and this doesn’t really change that.
But it has kept the faint hopes of one alive after Norris managed to actually gain a small amount on Verstappen despite his nightmare Saturday.
What this has done is thrown a fresh twist on the Red Bull problem: which is that there is potential in that car that Verstappen can’t extract. Sergio Perez showed that this weekend, and it’s been a very long time since that was the case.
Usually we think Verstappen will maximise the car and in a way that could be a positive for him. If he learns from this like he did from his Baku 2023 defeat to Perez, clearly he will fight for podiums at worst for much of the rest of the season. That’ll be enough to see the championship over the line.
Perez’s form is a welcome silver lining for Red Bull but not enough given the car is weaker than McLaren. So I’d be stunned if Red Bull comes back in the constructors’ championship. That battle was only trending one way and now McLaren is front I see no reason it won’t stay there.
McLAREN TEAM ORDERS DECLARATION NOW LOOKS SILLY
Josh Suttill
Sunday couldn't have gone much better for McLaren.
Piastri wins from the front row and Norris charges to fourth from 15th via a pass on title rival Verstappen. That's a big win for the team and it proved Norris can still make inroads in the championship even after an outlying qualifying disaster. You'd much rather have the car that went out in qualifying through unfortunate circumstances than the one that went backwards on Sunday through factors all of its own making.
But where McLaren did falter was making headlines right before the weekend that it was favouring Norris over Piastri when it didn't need to.
Backing Norris and making tough calls to win the drivers' title was right. It's a realistic target and there are things McLaren can and should be doing.
But it didn't need to set the tone and storyline of the weekend on Thursday with such a big public declaration.
Norris said on Thursday "we've had decisions before and things we've run through, we've just not publicly said it. More we've just told you what you want to hear finally than anything else," indicating that one of the key motivators of McLaren's Norris priority communication was silencing the noise from fans and media.
But if it was worried about optics then Piastri romping to a win well clear of the driver McLaren's making him support is going to look like an unnecessary own goal.
It couldn't have foreseen Norris qualifying so out of position but Piastri has outscored Norris in the last six rounds pre-Baku, so it was always going to be possible it would happen again this weekend.
This isn't just with the benefit of hindsight, but McLaren would have been better managing things internally, publicly declaring it wants to win both titles and promising it will do what's necessary to win them.
NORRIS ISN’T GAINING GROUND FAST ENOUGH
Edd Straw
What happened in Baku hasn't changed the landscape in the world championship battles.
While McLaren has now taken the constructors' championship lead, that's been an inevitability for some time so it's simply the realisation of the prevailing trend.
In the drivers’ championship, this is another race that could have been huge for Norris but ultimately wasn't. That's down to the misfortune of encountering a double waved yellow covering Esteban Ocon's crawling Alpine in Q1 that meant his was always a race of damage limitation.
Overall, it went well for Norris because he did beat Verstappen. But there was also help from the Carlos Sainz/Perez collision as that denied Verstappen the chance to take an inevitable fastest lap having bolted on softs. So that meant Norris hung onto it, meaning a three-point gain.
But while in the context of Sunday that was a good outcome for Norris, in the big picture it's still well short of the closing rate that he should be producing.
His gains have been glacial and 59 points with seven races (and three sprints to go) still isn't close enough. This weekend that's down to the bad luck of qualifying, but F1 history is full of examples of how difficult it is to make big, sustained points gains when you are playing catch up even with a stronger car.
The key questions remain unchanged in terms of whether Red Bull can take a big step - most likely at Austin next month - with a corrective upgrade and if Norris can increase the rate of his glacial points progress with time running out.
PLEASE LET US KEEP THIS GREAT RACING
Gary Anderson
I think we just saw the best race for quite a few seasons with three different teams fighting for victory. Unfortunately the FIA is just about to implement a reset with major regulation changes for 2026. Get rid of the MGU-H if you want to, help save the world by using a higher percentage of sustainable fuel, but please rethink at minimum the chassis changes, simply dot the I’s and cross the T’s on the current package and let’s keep what we have: racing.
Just to reiterate what we currently have it’s battle royale for the big payday of the constructors’ championship to the end of the season. It’s closer than it has been for probably 10 years, with McLaren now ahead with 476 points, Red Bull on 456, Ferrari still close on 425, so it’s all to fight for over the remaining seven events.
As for the drivers’ championship it’s just a little more difficult for Norris to catch Verstappen. He closed the gap slightly this weekend but not by enough to make a major impact.
Verstappen has 313 points, Norris 254, Leclerc 235 and today’s winner Piastri’s on 222 so in reality none of the top four are out of it. Piastri has been the biggest points winner over the last seven races so not bad for - as his manager Mark Webber would call it - a ”number two”. Just joking there.
With seven grands prix to go (which with fastest lap is 182 points available for GPs plus three sprints which give 24 points so that’s a total of 206 points up for grabs) Norris needs an average of nine points more than Verstappen per race, Leclerc 11 and Piastri 13. So difficult for anyone other than Norris but not impossible.
For Red Bull the writing has been on the wall for around 10 races and it hasn’t really responded in the way that team would have done in the past.
But if Verstappen doesn’t start throwing points away by overdriving and making mistakes the drivers’ championship is probably still his.
The constructors’ is another matter and hopefully both championships are going to go down to the last chequered flag of the season.
