Ricciardo wins Azerbaijan GP as Hamilton, Vettel engages in ugly spat

Even before its start, Azerbaijan Grand Prix made quite a news for various reasons, but none could come closer to the news from the race itself. The Azerbaijan GP at Baku race track saw an incident filled race, leaving is with a lot of tense and nail-biting moments. But the most tense moment in the race came when Hamilton and Vettel got involved in an ugly spat.

More on that later, but first let’s talk about the winner - Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo, who had gone from the back to the front to win the race in Baku, his third podium in back-to-back races. Daniel snubbed Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas and Lance Stroll who took his maiden podium for Williams, in a dramatic race featuring no less than three safety-car periods and a red-flag race stoppage.

Apart from the numerous accidents, the Azerbaijan GP will be remembered for two reasons – Vettel and Hamilton clash and maiden podium win for rookie Stroll. The Canadian became the 208th driver in the F1 history to score a world championship podium, and just the third Canadian to do so. The last Canadian did it 16 years back during the 2001 German Grand Prix.

Stroll, at 18 years and 239 days, is also the second youngest person to win podium, behind only Max Verstappen, who was 12 days younger when he won in Spain last year. However, Stroll is the youngest rookie to win the podium, as Verstappen won in his second year of Grand Prix racing. "I can't quite realise what just happened," Stroll said. "I'm sort of lost for words. I couldn’t believe coming into the weekend that I would be standing on the podium!

As for the Vettel-Hamilton clash, everything was going fine until the safety car came on the track. Hamilton complained about the safety car being too slow and had to hard brake his car on a turn. Vettel, taken by surprise, hit him from behind. Furious Vettel though Hamilton did it on purpose, and pulled alongside the Mercedes and even hit him intentionally.

This led to a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for Vettel, despite which he took the fourth place. “I didn’t [brake check him],” said an unhappy Hamilton. “I control the pace, so like all the other re-starts I slowed down at the same spot. He was obviously sleeping and drove into the back of me. But that wasn’t the issue for me. Driving alongside and driving deliberately into a driver and getting away scot-free, pretty much – he still came away with fourth – I think it’s a disgrace.”

“I think he disgraced himself today, to be honest. I think driving dangerously which in any way could put another driver at risk, I mean luckily we were going slow, if we were going faster, it could’ve been a lot worse. Imagine all the young kids that are watching Formula One today and seeing that kind of behaviour from a four-time world champion. I think that says it all.”

As mentioned above, it was an incident filled race and the first accident happened at the 13th lap with Daniil Kvyat’s broken Toro Rosso. Then on the 16th lap, both the Force Indias collided due to an aggressive turn by Esteban Ocon. The race was red flagged again in the 22nd lap to clear debris. Hamilton’s headrest was fitted incorrectly during the red flag action.

Hamilton had to settle for fifth place as Vettel increased his points lead to 14. Ocon also got a reprieve and dragged his damaged car to sixth spot, ahead of Kevin Magnussen, who brought Haas more points with a good drive to seventh and Carlos Sainz recovered from a spin in Turn 1 on the opening lap to take eighth for Toro Rosso.

Fernando Alonso finally opened McLaren’s account for the season with two points for ninth place and behind him was Pascal Wehrlein of Sauber on the 10th spot, finishing the top 10 of Azerbaijan GP.

The next race will take place in Austria in two weeks’ time, so stay tuned for updates!

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