News Summary
- Baku has produced seven different winners in its nine Azerbaijan Grands Prix since 2016, and no driver has ever won there in consecutive years — a record unmatched by any other circuit on the calendar.
- The track’s split identity is the reason: a 2.2km flat-out main straight built for slipstreaming feeds into a castle section just 7.6 metres wide, where a single mistake ends a race.
- The circuit has a habit of punishing race leaders specifically — Valtteri Bottas in 2018 and Max Verstappen in 2021 both lost commanding wins to late punctures from track debris.
There’s a reason Baku resists prediction better than any other stop on the calendar. Since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix joined Formula 1 in 2016, it has crowned seven different winners across nine races, with only Sergio Pérez (2021, 2023) and Max Verstappen (2022, 2025) managing to win there more than once — and neither achieved it in back-to-back years. No circuit currently on the calendar has a longer streak of refusing to produce a repeat winner the following season.
The layout explains a lot of it. Baku’s defining feature is a 2.2-kilometre main straight — more than half the length of Monaco’s entire lap — that runs flat-out from Turn 16 through four corners before drivers brake from around 350km/h into Turn 1, often three abreast. It’s the longest sustained full-throttle section in Formula 1, and it rewards a low-downforce, high-top-speed setup.
But less than a kilometre later, the same cars have to thread turns 7, 8 and 9 through Baku’s UNESCO-protected Old City walls, where the track narrows to just 7.6 metres — barely wider than the length of an F1 car sideways. That stretch punishes exactly the low-downforce setup the straight rewards, forcing every team into a compromise that rarely suits every session of the weekend equally.
That contradiction between wide-open speed and knife-edge precision is also why Baku produces so much late drama. In 2018, Valtteri Bottas had the race won with a lap to go before running over debris on the pit straight, puncturing a tyre and handing the victory to teammate Lewis Hamilton. In 2021, Max Verstappen was cruising toward what looked like a comfortable win — four laps from the flag, with the race under control — when his left-rear tyre failed at high speed and sent him into the wall, promoting Sergio Pérez to the win instead. Both failures were later traced to debris on track, a hazard that a street circuit with concrete walls on both sides makes almost impossible to avoid entirely.
Charles Leclerc’s record at the venue captures the pattern from another angle. He took pole position four years running, from 2021 to 2024, and converted none of them into a win — finishing fourth, retiring, then third and second.
Qualifying well at Baku has rarely been a guarantee of anything once the race actually starts, and this year’s race weekend arriving on a Saturday instead of the usual Sunday doesn’t change any of that history — if anything, a compressed schedule leaves teams even less room to adjust a setup that gets the balance wrong.
For Max Verstappen, still chasing his first win of the season, Baku’s habit of turning on whoever looks safest is either the biggest threat to a result or, if his 2025 dominance is any guide, exactly the kind of circuit where his car has answered the layout’s demands better than most.
F1 today: FAQ
Why is the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Saturday?
The race takes place on Saturday, September 26, because Sunday is Azerbaijan’s Remembrance Day. The entire programme was moved forward, with practice on Thursday and qualifying on Friday.
What time does the 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix start?
The Azerbaijan GP starts at 12:00 UK, 07:00 ET and 15:00 local time on Saturday. It will run for 51 laps around the 6.003km Baku City Circuit.
Can Kimi Antonelli win the 2026 F1 championship in Azerbaijan?
Yes. Antonelli arrives in Baku with an 81-point lead over George Russell, making him mathematically capable of securing the championship. To become champion, he must leave Azerbaijan at least 75 points ahead.
Why has no driver ever won back-to-back Azerbaijan Grands Prix?
It isn’t down to one cause — a mix of Safety Car interruptions, tyre failures from track debris and the circuit’s unusual combination of a long flat-out straight with an extremely narrow castle section has repeatedly disrupted whoever looked strongest, from Bottas’s 2018 puncture to Verstappen’s 2021 crash while leading.
