Mark Hughes on whether Sainz could have held on to second place

      Mark Hughes, the expert for the championship's official website, analyzed the events of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix to determine whether Carlos Sainz had any chance of holding onto the second position he started from in Baku. In the end he reached an unambiguous conclusion…

      Max Verstappen dominated the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from start to finish, and everyone else played second fiddle. Since the safety car came out only once after Oscar Piastri's crash on the first lap, no one could spoil the perfect day for the Dutch Red Bull Racing driver.

      But it was interesting whether Carlos Sainz would be able to stay in second place after the excellent qualifying result, since there were several faster cars behind his Williams.

      In the first stint he initially pulled away from Liam Lawson, who was running third, but when the Racing Bull team carried out a fairly early pit stop on lap 20, unsuccessfully trying to counter the threat from Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes driver (who had pitted even earlier on lap 18), it became clear this put Sainz under pressure from George Russell, who was about 3.5 seconds behind but lapping quicker.

      Moreover, it wasn't just that the Williams was slower than the Mercedes: Russell had also started on hard tyres, and at this stage of the race they allowed faster lap times than the Medium tyres Sainz had started on.

      When the gap between their cars shrank to 2.6 seconds, at the end of lap 26 Sainz radioed the team: “We can't let Russell use the earlier pit-stop tactic.” From the Williams pit wall they reassured him they saw the threat, so at the end of lap 27 they called their driver into the pits: he took on a fresh set of hard tyres, which he was expected to run to the finish.

      He rejoined the track 19 seconds behind Russell, who had not yet pitted, even though George's Mercedes tyres had already done 27 laps. The estimated time loss for a pit stop in Baku is 20 or 21 seconds, so Sainz's task was to prevent Russell from increasing his lead by more than a second by the time he planned to pit.

      Normally, with such a difference in tyre age, that task isn't too difficult. Although the Williams FW47 is slower than the Mercedes W16, Sainz's tyres were 27 laps fresher, and that is usually more than enough to compensate for the deficit in pace. One could even have expected Carlos to reduce the gap to his rival.

      But there is a factor at the Baku circuit that complicated everything. To bring the Hard tyre fully up to optimal working temperature you needed to run up to ten laps, and if you drove too aggressively before that they would quickly lose effectiveness. Moreover, once the tyre was up to the right temperature it was least susceptible to degradation.

      “On this track you actually had to try to attack aggressively to keep the tyres up to temperature, whereas usually the difficulty is keeping them from overheating,” Russell said after the race.

      Because there was no degradation, the C4 hard compound retained peak performance longer than usual. In short, Sainz's task turned out to be much harder than it had appeared.

      Around lap 34 Russell was able to push, and his advantage over Sainz exceeded 20 seconds. Carlos managed to react, he raised his pace too, so laps 37 and 38 were no worse than George's, keeping the deficit roughly at the same level, i.e. just above 20 seconds.

      Would that be enough? Mercedes didn't think so, and when Russell turned into the pits at the end of lap 39 they told their driver: “When we come out of the pit lane we'll be a second behind Sainz.”

      But that did not take into account two factors: how aggressively Russell would attack on the pit-lane entry, and how quickly the Mercedes mechanics could change his tyres.

      The total time loss for the pit stop was only 19.8 seconds — less than any other team. So George rejoined the track ahead of the Williams, after which he began to increase the lead, as he was on fresh Medium tyres, and ultimately finished second nearly 15 seconds behind Verstappen.

      But third place is still a superb result for Williams, confirming the progress made over the course of this season. Carlos Sainz said it was the best podium of his career — it’s quite possible that, finishing third, he was happier than Russell, who finished second.