2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

The **2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix** was the eighth round of the 2022 Formula 1.5 World Championship at the Baku City Circuit in Baku on 12 June 2022.

## Background

### Championship Standings before the race

In the Drivers' Championship, Valtteri Bottas led with 120 points, after the Monaco Grand Prix, 1 ahead of Lando Norris in second, with Esteban Ocon in third position. McLaren led Alpine by 8 points, and Alfa Romeo by 17 points in the Constructors' Championship.

### Entrants

The drivers and teams were the same as the season entry list with no additional stand-in drivers for the race.

### Tyres

Tyre supplier Pirelli brought the C3, C4, and C5 tyre compounds (designated hard, medium, and soft, respectively) for teams to use at the event.

## Practice

The first two free practices took place on 10 June 2022, at 15:00–16:00 and 18:00–19:00 local time (UTC+04:00) respectively and the third practice was initially scheduled to take place on 11 June 2022, at 15:00 local time, but was postponed to 15:15 local time, to allow for barrier repairs following a crash in the Formula 2 support race that had taken place around 13:30.

Fernando Alonso topped FP1 ahead of Tsunoda and Gasly. In FP2 it was the same top three with Alonso on top, but this time Gasly was ahead of Tsunoda. Norris topped FP3 ahead of teammate Ricciardo and Pierre Gasly.

## Qualifying

Qualifying was due to start at 18:00 local time on 11 June, but the session start was delayed to 18:15 as a consequence of delaying the final practice session.

With about four minutes to go in the first segment of qualifying, Lance Stroll locked up and hit the barrier, at low speed, at turn 7. He reversed and carried on, he hit the barrier again, this time at turn 2 and with a lot more speed. He broke his front wing and front right suspension and was forced to leave his car on track. This resulted in a red flag. Once the session restarted, all the drivers who wanted to set another lap managed to get to the start line on time, but on his last flying lap, Fernando Alonso went straight on at turn 15 and caused yellow flags, meaning the drivers behind could not complete their laps at full speed. Alexander Albon accused Alonso of going off on purpose, Alonso later denied the claims. Kevin Magnussen, Albon, Nicholas Latifi, Stroll and Mick Schumacher were all knocked out from qualifying after the first session.

With just under seven and a half minutes to go in the second qualifying session, Sebastian Vettel locked up at turn 15 and hit the barrier at low speed. His car was undamaged, so he reversed and carried on. Similarly to Vettel, Lando Norris also went straight on at turn 15, however he was able to avoid the barriers. Norris spun his car around and carried on, but ultimately, the mistake cost him his lap and he was eliminated. Norris, Daniel Ricciardo, Esteban Ocon, Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas were all knocked out from qualifying in the second session.

## Race

The race started at 15:00 local time on 12 June. Zhou Guanyu retired on lap 23 with a hydraulics issue. On lap 31, Kevin Magnussen's car also had an engine issue resulting in smoke. He pulled over just before turn 15 off the racing line, but it still resulted in a second virtual safety car. Most of the grid chose to pit for fresher tyres. On lap 36, Yuki Tsunoda's rear wing split, resulting in half the rear wing opening on the straights; he was shown the black and orange flag and he came into the pits for repairs. The AlphaTauri pit crew taped up his rear wing to stop it from moving, and he was released back into the race. On lap 46, Lance Stroll was called in to retire due to high oscillations.

## Championship Standings after the race

Drivers' Championship standings

  1
  1
  3

Constructors' Championship standings

## External Links

1. ↑  Includes one point for fastest lap.
2. ↑  Nicholas Latifi received a five-second time penalty for ignoring blue flags. His final position was not affected by the penalty.
3. ↑  Lance Stroll was classified as he completed more than 90% of the race distance.