Oscar Piastri is F1's luckiest man – Up/Down in Azerbaijan 2025
Lando Norris managed to snatch victory form the jaws of defeat in Baku, writes James Elson
Piastri realises the race isn't half as exciting as it seems when you're not in it
F1/Sky
Is Oscar Piastri blessed?
Looks like it, he being paired with a team-mate who has the pace but not the gumption to use it.
Piastri contrived to have possibly the worst weekend of his F1 career (he’s only in his third season!) in Baku, by crashing in qualifying, jumping the start then getting bogged down to drop to last, before thinking ‘to hell with it’ and just putting it in the wall after it all seemed too much.
Luckily his team-mate Norris had a desultory qualifying before doing almost nothing in the race, his small amount of good work undone by another McLaren pitstop fumble.
After all the Australian’s travails, Norris could have swiped 25 points off his Macca colleague’s lead to get within six points of him.
Instead six was actually the grand total that the Brit took away from his team-mate.
The championship fight might have been pulled back to a near dead heat again, instead it’s still advantage Piastri who is still more than a race win ahead of Norris.
The Brit is usually good at Singapore, dominating there last year. Norris should do the same this year, if he can avoid crumbling like he sometimes does…
The real smooth operator – Going Up
Australian evaded his main attacker
Grand Prix Photo
Objectively, almost couldn’t have been a worse weekend. Basically gets away with it. Nice.
Orange Crumble – Going Down
Has Norris got what it takes?
Grand Prix Photo
No chance of winning the championship at this rate.
Shark Attacks – Going Up
Verstappen leaves them all for dead
Red Bull
Max embarrasses the rest of the field again. He could easily gobble up the remaining 69 points to Piastri, such is his sense of purpose and McLaren’s, err, lack of.
Sainz rallies – Going Up
Virtuoso performance
Williams
Sainz did that classic thing sports stars love to do by simply being in the right place at the right time (see Daniel Ricciardo Italy 2021 win, or the art of ‘goal hanging’ in football) and then celebrating as if he’s just pulled off an absolute sporting masterstroke.
Easy for us to say, but whatever, we’re going with it.
In the bunker – Going Down
Albon’s scuppered himself
Williams
Albon must have pondered what might have been after seeing a team-mate who’s been slower than slow all season grab third, while the Thai driver eliminated himself in Baku Q1.
About time – Going Up
Lawson keeps them at bay
Red Bull
Racing Bulls is finally chalking up the results they’ve threatened to all season after Hadjar’s Zandvoort podium and a fifth for Lawson in Azerbaijan.
Verstappen would have the championship wrapped up in beautifully-named VCARB 02 already.
Kind of Blue – Going Down
Don’t cry for me Argentina etc
Alpine
He’s had 11 attempts, but Colapinto still hasn’t scored a better result than Jack Doohan, who he replaced. Eek.
Crash of the weekend – Going Down
The incident that brought Qualifying to an early end… 😱❌
Stanek has been given a five-place grid penalty to be served in both races #F2 #AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/9CjSCwAi3E
— Formula 2 (@Formula2) September 19, 2025
Difficult to decide whether to put this one in up or down. In ‘Battle of the Rich Kids with Slightly Less Talent Than The Rich Kids in F1’ (i.e. F2) Roman Stanek managed to sail off at Turn 1, then rejoin by smashing into John Bennett.
You see these brats do some daft things in the lower formulas, but this prang was off the scale.