Verstappen Wins Baku, McLaren Trips Over the Furniture

Some Formula 1 races are like a triple espresso: sharp, jolting, and guaranteed to rattle your bones. Others are like warm milk at bedtime. Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as it turned out, was more like Max Verstappen running a one-man parade while everyone else played bumper cars behind him.

Verstappen never so much as flinched. He started from pole, led every single lap, and had the audacity to make it look easy on the tight, windy streets of Baku. The Dutchman won by nearly 15 seconds, his car looking so composed it could have passed for a guided missile. “I think this weekend has been incredible for us,” he said, adding that even in the gusty winds the car was “always moving around a lot,” yet somehow he was “incredibly happy with this performance.” Well, of course he was—he’d just pulled off his sixth career grand slam, tying Lewis Hamilton and lurking two behind Jim Clark.

Behind him, George Russell did what Mercedes drivers have been doing for the last few years: salvage a decent result while dreaming of the glory days. Carlos Sainz, meanwhile, gave Williams their first podium in four years, a result so rare it should be mounted in the team’s reception area under glass.

But the real fireworks came before the champagne corks. Oscar Piastri, the championship leader, managed to botch his Sunday before he’d even crossed the start line. He twitched in his grid box, triggered anti-stall, got swallowed whole by the pack, and then—in a flourish worthy of slapstick—planted his McLaren in the wall at Turn 5. The Australian climbed out, the race only a few minutes old, muttering later that it was “certainly not my finest moment” and admitting it was a “silly, simple error.” Translation: I screwed up, and badly.

That left his teammate Lando Norris with a golden chance to cash in. Instead, Norris put on his best impression of a man trying to run through wet cement. Starting seventh, dropping as low as ninth, climbing back to—wait for it—seventh again. He couldn’t even get past Yuki Tsunoda on the final lap. Yes, the same Yuki Tsunoda who spent the last few laps driving like a terrier off its leash. Norris gained six points on Piastri, but given his teammate’s crash-and-burn exit, it was like winning a free coffee when the jackpot was a Lamborghini.

Elsewhere, Liam Lawson drove the wheels off his Racing Bulls machine to claim a career-best fifth, holding off Tsunoda’s late attacks. Tsunoda himself bagged sixth, his best-ever result in Red Bull colors, which will surely buy him another week of job security. Norris slumped into seventh, while Lewis Hamilton sneaked past Charles Leclerc late on to steal eighth. Isack Hadjar nabbed the final point for Racing Bulls in tenth, another “pinch me” result for a team that usually measures success in terms of how few wings they’ve binned.

The rest of the cast featured Kimi Antonelli just missing the podium, Gabriel Bortoleto being the best of the nobodies, and Alex Albon picking up a penalty for smashing into Franco Colapinto. Fernando Alonso jumped the start and got slapped down, Esteban Ocon started last thanks to an illegal rear wing, and Nico Hülkenberg, Lance Stroll, and the Alpines all finished somewhere in the depths of the order.

In the end, Verstappen left Baku with the kind of win that makes everyone else groan. Piastri was left sulking, admitting he “just didn’t make the judgement calls” he needed, while Norris leaves with the world’s most useless seventh place. The only real question is whether anyone can actually stop Verstappen, or if the rest of the season is just going to be him collecting trophies while everyone else writes apology notes.

Race marshals wave the checkered flags as Red Bull Racing’s Dutch driver Max Verstappen crosses the finish line to win the the Formula One Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit in Baku on September 21, 2025. (Photo by Lisi Niesner / POOL / AFP) (Photo by LISI NIESNER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

FORMULA 1 AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX 2025 – RACE RESULT

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Greg Engle

Greg is a published award winning sportswriter who spent 23 years combined active and active reserve military service, much of that in and around the Special Operations community.

Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.

Latest posts by Greg Engle (see all)

• Verstappen Wins Baku, McLaren Trips Over the Furniture - September 21, 2025
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