This week, we’re back in Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
This will be the 10th event held here, with the circuit well-liked for its blend of tight and twisty sections as well as very long straights.
It’s provided some entertaining races in the past, and the Silver Arrows have the most podiums of everyone, as well as Mercedes power having helped achieve five victories here – the most of any supplier.
Navigating an F1 car around a street circuit is challenging at the best of times, but Baku really pushes the drivers to ‘thread the eye of the needle’ when it comes to the uphill Turns 7 and 8. Here the cars – which are about 1.9m in width – have to swoop into the famous castle section through a 7.6m piece of track – about the width of four George Russells standing on top of each other.
This area of the track is not only demanding, and has seen a few drivers caught out over the years, but the Icheri Sheher area is UNESCO-listed. The backdrop, which is one of the calendar’s most magical and iconic, is filled with the medieval old city, the Maiden Tower and walls that could tell a thousand stories.
Being the fourth-longest circuit on the calendar at 6.003km and with 20 corners to tackle, drivers will inevitably be kept busy behind the steering wheel. However, here in Baku, George and Kimi undertake the most gear changes across a single lap than anywhere on the schedule, with more than 70.
As well as the twisty castle section, drivers also experience the longest flat-out piece of track across the whole year in Baku, with the huge run along the start-finish straight which is approximately 2.2km (1.37 miles) long.
Despite this long run of tarmac, the journey from pole position into the Turn 1 breaking point is just 141m, which is the shortest on the current calendar.
It’s this long straight which bore witness to the highest top speed ever recorded over a Grand Prix weekend, when Valtteri Bottas clocked 378km/h (234.878mph) for Williams Racing – powered by one of our power units in 2016. The former Mercedes driver clocked the speed during practice in Baku, but also holds the quickest speed during a Grand Prix too which he managed during the Mexican Grand Prix that same year.
That is the nickname Baku has established, and it’s a valid term with strong winds blowing through the coastal city. Baku derives from the shortened Persian name Bad-kuye, meaning "wind city", along with Bad-kube, which means "wind-hitting." This can make getting a lap around here tricky, with winds ready to catch out the very best at any given moment.
Baku is also the world’s lowest lying national capital and stands 28m below sea level.
Being such a long circuit and with so many difficult corners, red flags and safety cars are frequent. Last year’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix Qualifying session brought six red flags, a new record in Formula 1’s history, with the session being brought to a halt three times in Q1, once in Q2 and twice in the final Q3 runs.
This made the whole qualifying almost two hours long, at 1:58hrs, which is longer than the Grand Prix itself. Before that the record was five red flags, which happened in Imola in 2022 and Sao Paulo in the 2024 season.