2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Heroes and Zeroes

[Jericoke]

Heroes

Piastri.  Fantastic win, drove a strong race in a not the fastest car.  McLaren is still learning how to get race strategy right, but definitely had a good one today.

LeClerc.  Could've been better, but still had a great day.  Whatever McLaren did right, Ferrari did wrong.

Russell.  Surprise podium, but making sure you're there when opportunity strikes is important in F1

Albon, Colapinto and Williams. A great team effort (Albon's qualifying fan notwithstanding) got some very very good results to vault Williams ahead of Alpine!

Bearman.  First driver to get points with two different teams in his first two races.

Norris.  Recovered from a poor qualifying to finish ahead of the championship leader.

Zeros.

Tsunoda.  He's been keeping his nose clean, so disappointing for him to lose track of Stroll and cause contact.

Sainz and Perez.  My first thought was Sainz drifted into Perez, but on second though, Perez was the car behind, should've seen Sainz drifting over.  At this stage of the season, the race, and their careers, neither driver should have had that accident.

[Willy]

I can agree with all of what Jeri mentions, as usual.

I was a tad confused about Sainz appearing to turn left into Perez. He must have had a failure of something that caused his car to ram Perez as that was way more then just an effort to close the door.
This appeared to be more then drifting over.

[rmassart]

I think it's just a straightforward racing incident. I would put the blame slightly more on Perez since I think Sainz was just following the racing line and Perez had more space, but in the end they were both going for the same racing line, trying to get the slipstream from Leclerc.

[John S]

I agree with most of Jeri's Heroes & Zeros but I'd like to add one to Heroes & 3 to Zeros.

Hero:-  Alonso, he drove a lonely race but was there to collect best of the rest, he would have finished a credible 8th anyway, 6th was the reward for staying in the game.

Zeros:-

Charles - yes I know he put in a brilliant pole lap and had the race in his pocket for a 3rd of the distance, however why oh why did he persist in running so close to Oscar lap after lap after lap? Should have been apparent after 10 laps or so that Piastri wasn't going to be scared into a mistake.
Leclerc had more speed in free air so why not back off a second or 2 for another 10 laps and then mount an assault again. Think it's obvious Charles could have caught up to get DRS on Oscar again whenever he felt like it.
I wonder instead of pressure, pressure, pressure maybe he should have saved his tyres for an assault later on?
Charles is probably asking himself the same question. 

Alpine, what a stinking w/e, cars breaking down, fuel flow problems & stupid Ocon's machine causing Lando so much grief.

Merc, engine problems for both of their cars over w/e, has the summer break caused malaise amongst the engine builders, not as bad as Alpine but we expect better from Merc.

[rmassart]

Charles - yes I know he put in a brilliant pole lap and had the race in his pocket for a 3rd of the distance, however why oh why did he persist in running so close to Oscar lap after lap after lap? Should have been apparent after 10 laps or so that Piastri wasn't going to be scared into a mistake.
Leclerc had more speed in free air so why not back off a second or 2 for another 10 laps and then mount an assault again.

I think he needed the DRS in order to protect against Perez behind him?