Why Red Bull resurgence could be real - What to watch at 2025 Azerbaijan GP

Formula 1 swaps the high-speed sweeps of Monza for the unforgiving city walls of Baku this weekend, as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix hosts round 17 of the 2025 season.

The championship fight remains finely balanced, and the streets of the Caspian capital have a history of providing unexpected twists.

At the top of the agenda is whether Red Bull‘s Monza breakthrough was the start of a genuine revival or just a one-off flash of form.

Meanwhile, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri‘s rivalry will enter another chapter following the team orders controversy at Monza.

Strategy could also play a bigger role than usual, as Pirelli re-introduces its softest C6 compound.

Further down the grid, Haas rookie Ollie Bearman faces the daunting challenge of racing under the threat of a ban after racking up a series of penalty points.

Here’s what to watch out for this weekend in Baku.

Is Red Bull’s resurgence real?

Red Bull left Monza with a long-awaited taste of victory as Max Verstappen dominated to take his first win since the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix over three months earlier.

Now Baku will be the truer test of whether the team’s revival is genuine or merely a one-off flash of form as a result of the low-downforce demands of the Italian circuit.

Around the high-speed sweeps of the ‘Temple of Speed’, Red Bull rediscovered some of the pace that had been absent since F1 got to Europe, but the dominant win came after the team tailored its car set-up and upgrades specifically to the low-downforce, high-speed demands of the circuit, making strategic use of a new floor and a special rear wing.

Team boss Laurent Mekies claimed a lot of Red Bull’s progress was probably Monza-specific, and he remained cautious about the chance of all that progress transferring to other venues.

Monza and Baku share certain characteristics: both feature long straights and reward low-downforce set-ups that prioritise top speed, but they are also fundamentally different in layout and technical demands.

Unlike Monza, Baku includes several very tight, low- and medium-speed sections; the type opf corners that have highlighted Red Bull’s weak mechanical grip this year.

The team has a very strong record in Baku, but struggled badly in 2024, so the form it will bring to this weekend’s race is anyone’s guess. If it finds itself at the sharp end again, it could be a sign that the team’s Italian GP upgrades were more than just a flash in the pan.

The next chapter in McLaren title fight

McLaren’s demand for Oscar Piastri to allow Lando Norris past in the closing stages of the Italian Grand Prix drew sharp criticism from fans and experts alike, and has put the spotlight on how McLaren manages its driver dynamics and race strategies moving forward. Not for the first time.

It’s tempting to say that, after Monza, McLaren must tread carefully to avoid straining driver relationships and raising questions about the team’s internal cohesion.

But 16 grands prix into the season, it would be naïve to expect the dynamics at McLaren to change radically despite the backlash the team faced from fans after Monza.

McLaren doesn’t appear too bothered about how the outside world perceives what it believes is the fairest way to handle the tensions of the championship fight.

Logic suggests that McLaren’s ability to juggle competitiveness with fairness to both Norris and Piastri might play an important role in maintaining morale throughout the late-season title battles. So far, both team and drivers have ensured trhat no scenario has escalated beyond a few post-race headlines.

Unless something dramatic happens in Baku, it might just be another episode of the most congenial title fight in F1 history.

Can C6 compound make Baku a two-stop race?

Pirelli’s decision to bring the C6 tyre to Azerbaijan could make this weekend’s Grand Prix a two-stop race. At least that’s Pirelli’s hope.

F1’s tyre supplier has brought the fastest and least durable selection of tyres available, with the softest tyre in the range — the C6 — alongside the C5 as the medium tyre and the C4 as the hard. It’s one step softer than last year’s C3-C5 range.

The aim is to provide teams with more opportunities to vary their pitstop strategies, potentially pushing the race away from the one-stop norm seen in previous years.

The new-for-2025 C6 compound was first used at Imola for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, and while the race featured many drivers stopping twice, that was more down to circumstance, as a safety car period contributed significantly to teams opting for a two-stopper.

At Imola, no driver used the softest tyres in the race, making the experiment inconclusive, so Baku may provide a clearer answer as to whether the C6 actually makes a difference.

How will Bearman handle race ban threat?

Ollie Bearman faces a tense Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend after his Monza penalty put him just two points shy of an automatic one-race ban.

After being handed two penalty points for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz at the Italian Grand Prix, Bearman’s tally has reached 10 points.

The Monza penalty was highly debatable and would have easily fallen under the ‘racing incident’ category in the past, but, alas for Bearman, the stewards disagreed.

The Haas driver now faces the threat of a ban for the next four races — Azerbaijan, Singapore, USA and Mexico — before his points tally drops. Two penalty points from the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix, when he stood in for an ill Kevin Magnussen, are due to expire in November, 12 months after they were issued.

Considering Bearman has accumulated eight of his 10 penalty points in slightly over three months, the Briton will need to be extremely careful if he doesn’t want to follow in the tracks of Haas driver, Kevin Magnusson, who was banned for a race last year after accumulating 12 penalty points.

Driving guidelines in the spotlight again

Bearman’s penalty came one race after Carlos Sainz was deemed to be at fault for contact with Liam Lawson at Zandvoort, as he attempted to pass on the outside.

While debatable, both decisions were at least consistent under the previous interpretation of driving guidelines and race conduct rules.

But then Sainz won an appeal against his Dutch Grand Prix penalty, and the two penalty points that were added to his licence have been withdrawn. It has intensified debate about the consistency and transparency of race stewards’ decisions, exposing the underlying uncertainty in stewarding. The precise boundaries of responsibility, and whether drivers on the inside or outside should bear the burden during incidents remains confusing to many.