NASCAR news

[RogerDuke]

Interesting. Maybe they do follow NASCARs schedule. Hopefully Chase Elliott will put it all together next season. This one has been good but also disappointing.

[Garrett Duke]

31 minutes ago, RogerDuke said:

Interesting. Maybe they do follow NASCARs schedule. Hopefully Chase Elliott will put it all together next season. This one has been good but also disappointing.

It also could be coincidence. But yeah hopefully next season will be better for him. It has been a disappointing season. he's still in the Chase, so maybe he can turn it around. 

[HossC]

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was on this afternoon, and it was a great race, but more of that below.

In the build-up to the race it was being reported that McLaren would be favoring Lando Norris over his team mate Oscar Piastri as Lando has the best chance of catching championship leader Max Verstappen. That went out the window when Lando had to slow for a yellow flag during the first qualifying session and got knocked out there. He qualified 16th, but started 15th after Lewis Hamilton took a grid penalty for going over his annual engine allowance and started from the pit lane. Max wasn't happy with his setup and only qualified sixth, out qualified by his team mate Sergio Perez for the first time this year. At the front, Charles Leclerc followed his win in Monza with his fourth consecutive pole in Baku. Oscar Piastri started second.

Charles held his position off the line and stretched his lead to about 4 seconds before the pit stops. A few drivers swapped places behind and Lando started to make up places before getting stuck behind the Williams of Alex Albon. Both were on the hard tires and going longer into the race, but when Alex pitted, Lando was able to make up time before he pitted.

Soon after Oscar and Charles pitted, Oscar was able to take advantage of his fresh tires and made a great dive from a long way back to take the lead. We then had over 20 laps of Oscar battling Charles with Sergio only just behind. After driving in the dirty air of second place for so long, Charles' tires were done with about four laps to go and Oscar finally managed to break away a little. In the meantime, the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz had caught up to the lead drivers. As they started the penultimate lap, Sergio went for second place, but ended up letting Carlos through. Carlos and Sergio then fought the next couple of corners before colliding at high speed on the next straight. The race finished under a virtual safety car with Oscar taking his second F1 victory ahead of Charles. The crash promoted Mercedes' George Russell to third with Lando overtaking Max with a few laps to go to take a great fourth. Both of the Williams cars scored valuable points in seventh and eighth with Franco Colapinto in only his second race after replacing Logan Sargeant mid-season becoming the first Argentinian driver to score point since 1982. Lewis came in ninth, just ahead of stand-in driver Oliver Bearman scoring a point for Haas when he beat his team mate Nico Hulkenberg.

With only one Red Bull and one Ferrari finishing, McLaren take the lead in the Constructors' Championship for the first time since 2014. In the Drivers' Championship, Lando moves three point closer to Max.

You can see the 8-minute highlights here.

Next week is the Singapore Grand Prix which is a night race. Traditionally, Red Bull haven't gone well there, and the McLaren drivers were talking about Ferrari being their main rivals for the rest of the season.