A messy Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying set up a disastrous race for some - including the 2025 Formula 1 world championship rivals - and a day of utter delight for others.
Here’s our pick of who has most to celebrate or to rue
Loser - Oscar Piastri (DNF)
If just before the lights go out counts as part of the opening lap, then Oscar Piastri maybe had the worst lap of anyone all season - and was fortunate that F1 rules are sane enough to prevent his jumped start penalty from converting into a Singapore grid drop.
Piastri admitted he just "misjudged the grip level" in his subsequent crash and said he wasn't too worried - which is probably the healthy way to look at it, especially with his points lead somehow taking a lesser blow than if he had followed Lando Norris home in a conventional McLaren 1-2.
Regardless, this was very poor - from the slowness and raggedness on Friday, to the crash on Saturday, to whatever this was today. - Valentin Khorounzhiy
Winner - Max Verstappen (1st)
Although Max Verstappen downplayed suggestions that his second consecutive victory from pole position means he's suddenly a championship contender again, far more important is that it confirms the gains Red Bull has made with its Monza upgrade. That proves his mid-season slump is definitely over and that there should be other opportunities to grab victories.
He also didn't put a foot wrong in the race, never looking vulnerable even when starting on hard tyres gave him a disadvantage off the line and at the restart after the early safety car. He barely featured on the live feed simply because he was so far ahead of everyone else. - Edd Straw
Loser - Lando Norris (7th)
Norris was very keen to point out McLaren was "not that quick" through the Baku weekend - and certainly it looked a handful, which means it's definitely not true that he should've just taken 25 points out of Piastri here once his team-mate crashed out.
But the idea Norris anywhere near maximised the weekend (which was his take on his race performance in the context of qualifying) didn't seem to hold water - not when the Saturday slide at Turn 15 probably cost him a full row of the grid at least, and not when he was caught napping by Charles Leclerc on the safety car restart.
This should have been a double-digit points swing in the title race, but it emphatically wasn’t. - VK
Winner - Carlos Sainz (3rd)
Carlos Sainz's struggle for results since his move to Williams has been a significant talking point recently, but he emphatically proved what he had been saying all along about having adapted well and having the speed - scoring a superb third place from second on the grid.
Chances are, the satisfaction of having proved his point will be a close second to the importance of his landmark first Williams podium finish.
"It's what I've been looking for since the beginning of the season, just to nail a perfect weekend," was his verdict, with the only disappointment that he didn't have the pace required early in his hard-tyre stint to prevent George Russell beating him to second in a strategic fight. - ES
Loser - Ferrari (8th and 9th)
There are two theories to explain Ferrari's weekend and neither of them are good.
Theory one: Despite the Friday flourish, this was a mediocre car mediocrely limping to two mediocre finishing positions.
Theory two: As evidenced by the Friday flourish, this was at least a pretty good car let down by its two drivers on Saturday (or tyre strategy, if you choose to believe that explanation), then hindered further by dubious strategic execution on Sunday - most notably the Leclerc undercut attempt that left him trapped behind Liam Lawson, hopelessly burning up the tyres.
It's a copout but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle - a car that was a little flattered by the Friday conditions, Lewis Hamilton in OK-but-unspectacular form at a track he's never counted among his best, Leclerc uncomfortable and off his game at a track he's usually counted among his best.
In any case, it adds up to losing a second place in the constructors' that had felt nailed on. Ferrari is still probably favourite to ultimately get that - but would you be shocked if it gets beaten by Mercedes and/or Red Bull? - VK
Winner - Mercedes (2nd and 4th)
This was a valuable second place for Russell - "feeling like s**t all weekend", as he put it, and with Toto Wolff revealing it was "touch and go" on Friday as to whether Valtteri Bottas would have to subsitute.
But it almost felt like a bigger fourth place for rookie Kimi Antonelli, who set up a good race with a great qualifying and a spectacular and brazen move on Russell after the restart, before dropping behind through strategy.
Wolff's "underwhelming" comment after Monza, though a fair reflection, was perhaps not entirely in line with something Mercedes would do well to remember - that this is a driver two years out of Formula Regional European.
As long as there are peaks in this rookie season, that should be enough. And there's another peak. - VK
Losers - Four irrelevant teams
If you showed the Azerbaijan GP to someone watching F1 for the first time and asked them after the chequered flag how many teams are taking part, there's two or three they would've had almost no chance remembering after today.
Alpine, at least, was granted a star cameo by Alex Albon punting Franco Colapinto (thanks for that), and Fernando Alonso got some airtime by jumping his start in reacting to Piastri, but ultimately those two teams plus Sauber and Haas were non-factors.
That's not to say all four were equally non-competitive - maybe the Haas, specifically Ollie Bearman's Haas, had something if not for his Q2 crash - but to say instead all four were equally irrelevant, as evidenced by the shocking almost 29-second gap between 10th-placed Isack Hadjar's Racing Bulls and 11th-placed Gabriel Bortoleto's Sauber. - VK
Winner - Yuki Tsunoda (6th)
OK, don’t look at the Racing Bulls just ahead of him at the finish. That’s not ideal, and really nor is not even being near the podium when the other Red Bull is dominating the race. If this was Sergio Perez 12 months ago, a sixth place wouldn’t be hailed as a drive-saver.
But aside from all that, this is still Tsunoda’s best grand prix finish as a Red Bull driver. It’s something tangible after a run of scruffy, unproductive Sundays.
It’s not enough but it’s a start, and maybe that will lead to some genuinely better things to come. - Matt Beer
Loser - Alex Albon (13th)
This wasn't really a day for charging through the field, clearly, so Albon's weekend was toast the second he tagged the barrier in Q1.
However, punting Colapinto into a spin with a never-on move only exacerbated the contrast to Williams team-mate Sainz's mighty weekend - while also tacking on some penalty points for good measure. - VK
Winner - Liam Lawson (5th)
It might sting a little to come home fifth in a race in which he ran third early on and showed a real knack for keeping theoretically-faster cars behind, but in any case this was a marvellous, potentially career-saving bit of work by Lawson, who executed his late-race DRS train manoeuvring with particular aplomb.
Racing Bulls team-mate Hadjar acknowledged it as a "perfect race" by Lawson, who didn't necessarily seem to agree - lamenting that he ran out of energy defending from Antonelli after the pitstops, which allowed the Mercedes man to pounce.
Lawson described it as a "mistake" that he "made sure" never to repeat, and suspected Antonelli would've got ahead eventually anyway. But he jumped on Tsunoda after the Red Bull's pitstop, then managed the rest of the stint with nary a blip for a career-best finish. - VK
Loser - Isack Hadjar (10th)
The most likely 2026 scenario is still that this guy will be sat next to Verstappen in the garage of the team that dominated the Azerbaijan GP, and that one or both of Tsunoda or Lawson will be out of the Red Bull family and off the F1 grid.
One race as fourth out of four among the Red Bull quartet is enough of an anomaly from Hadjar not to do any long-term damage.
The mid-race error - a repeat of the Turn 16 qualifying mistake that left him down the grid compared to Lawson - that limited Hadjar to 10th just wasn’t ideal timing with Lawson and Tsunoda both in the top six holding off a McLaren. - MB
