In Retrospect: The 1999 European Grand Prix, by Steven Critchley

F1 action will return to Baku's treacherous street circuit on 25 June, after a successful hosting of last year's European Grand Prix, which returned to the calendar after a three-year absence. This time, it will be host to the inaugural Azerbaijan Grand Prix, once more testing the technical abilities of constructors in a more diverse way, while also forcing drivers on the circuit to time their overtakes to perfection.

As a street circuit, Baku offers little margin for error from anyone, regardless of how experienced or decorated they may be. Another battle of Ferrari versus Mercedes is expected, but the negation of the disparity that once existed is reflected by Mercedes's Valtteri Bottas being priced at 28/1 on bet365's F1 betting odds to win this year's title. However, the unpredictability that typically characterises a new F1 circuit was in full evidence last year, when Sergio Perez enjoyed a rare moment in the sun in an unfancied Force India car and finished third.


19 June 2016: Drivers speak to press after the inaugural F1 race in Baku. 

European Grand Prix review for Motor Verso - Nico's switch of fortunes

In the oddly-monikered European Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan, Mercedes was miles ahead on pace. But we all thought things would not be nearly that simple in the new circuit's tight inner-city confines. There would we thought likely be several prangs (and resultant safety car periods), while Sebastian Vettel could like in Canada take the lead off the line. But neither of these happened, so Mercedes, or rather one Mercedes, had the place to itself.

Photo: Octane Photography

It was a surprisingly tepid race, but F1, and Lewis Hamilton, found an unlikely source of drama nevertheless. A matter of switches on steering wheels. In terms of things for races to pivot on, for us all to froth over, F1 cannot be said to be predictable. Despite some immediate appearances.

I give my take on it all in my latest Motor Verso race review. You can have a read via this link: http://www.motorverso.com/european-gp-2016-review-nicos-switch-fortunes/

Do check out the Motor Verso site too; you'll find motoring news, car reviews and features - the team on the site carry out week-long test drives of the latest cars - as well as photos and videos of the machines.

European GP Report - Tales of the unexpected

You can never second-guess this game. Despite regular appearances suggesting the contrary. Before qualifying for the inaugural European Grand Prix we were sure that it was going to be a Lewis Hamilton cruise. Not so, it was crazy (and Lewis certainly did not cruise). Before the race we expected it to be crazy, but it was a cruise. And a cruise for Nico Rosberg who led for the whole distance; never seen by the rest after scampering off in short order.

Nico Rosberg won as he liked in Baku
Photo: Octane Photography

Frankly the F1 drivers behaved themselves too much in the tight confines of Baku's streets. The repeated carnage and repeated safety car periods from both GP2 races was not even begun to be repeated, to the point that some wondered if all pilots had made a conscious, and cautious, effort not to repeat the frolics of their junior pretenders (not that, as someone pointed out, being more sensible than them was much of a bar to clear).

The safety car was never seen. No driver binned it (Felipe Nasr nudged a wall and continued at one point but that was your lot). Aside from Esteban Gutierrez love-tapping Nico Hulkenberg at the opening turn (both continued, natch) there were no collisions either. There only were four retirements and all were technical. You could say even that the F1 driver class was too good. Not that this amounted to much consolation on what was a soporific late afternoon.

Baku Qualifying - Failure has many fathers

The Baku City Centre track is one with many cousins. Any new circuit will attract comparisons, especially so these days for a number of reasons, but it's hard to think of a debut venue that ever has attracted as many as this one.

Nico Rosberg prevailed for pole
in a madcap qualifying session
Photo: Octane Photography

Street circuits almost inevitably are judged at least to some extent against the Monaco yardstick, and this one has with its tight and twisty section near the castle a particular Principality redolence. Yet in Baku too there is a flat out part that even dwarfs Monza's in length. Perhaps the combination made it more like Montreal. The wide open downtown streets made up of long straights and tight turns was a lot like Singapore some said; others thought there was a bit of Valencia in there. The smooth asphalt was reminiscent of Sochi's. Some even ventured outside F1 by stating the mix of a full throttle section near the sea plus an intricate and up and down hill section inland was a lot like Macau.

But in today's inaugural European Grand Prix qualifying session in Azerbaijan we can go full circle, back to the first comparison mentioned. The hour to set the grid was pure Monaco. All disruption, a matter almost of survival, not just from the walls but from traffic. As well as from yellow flags, even a red one, that can and did ruin attempts to set a mark. Cars venturing down escape roads has been a routine occurrence all weekend. At times it's looked a little like amateur hour. And many of the escape roads are so tight that cars could only reverse out of them, thus increasing the length of the yellow flag disruption. Laptimes banked counted for more than pace on paper. "There was a lot going on all over the place, and that's down to the track" said Nico Rosberg afterwards aptly. Things were crowded; disjointed; unpredictable. And it was reflected in the final order in large part.

Further thoughts on the European Grand Prix

The real story from Valencia?
What was the biggest story from the European Grand Prix in Valencia just passed? Fernando Alonso's victory was as unexpected as it was brilliant, and only a curmudgeon will have been left unmoved by his emotional home win, all of which leaves him a clear 20 points clear in the drivers' table.

Are Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull set to dominate?
Credit: Morio / CC

But in the midst of all this was the real story of the weekend, at least in the longer term, missed? Before his alternator failed him at mid distance Sebastian Vettel had routed the field. With Red Bull having turned up with a technical upgrade so extensive that one team member quipped that it was not so much a B-Spec as a D-Spec, no one could live with Seb. From pole position (acquired comfortably) at the start of the race his lap-on-lap lead went like this: 1.9 seconds, 4.0, 5.3, 6.8, 7.6, 8.5, 9.2. And by lap 22 he had upwards of 20 seconds in his pocket over the next guy, more than enough to make an additional pitstop and still be leading, before first the safety car and then, definitively, a dud alternator destroyed his advantage. It was an astonishing show of supremacy, the like of which we've almost never seen in F1 2012-style, but that we saw repeatedly last season.

So, has Red Bull put a massive stride on the opposition which will be decisive for where honours go this year? Well, I wouldn't put it past them; Adrian Newey and his team are perfectly capable of such a eureka moment. And, something that's under-commented on, Red Bull's record of in-season development is an excellent one. Try to remember one of its upgrades that didn't work and it's genuinely difficult to cite many (or any) examples. Of course, on the flip side it's been such an unpredictable season so far with such a multitude of variables that it may be foolish to base too much on one race; Vettel qualified only seventh in the Spanish round which followed his win in Bahrain earlier this year, and while Nico Rosberg trounced all in China he's barely been seen at the front since. And at least some of Seb's Valencia dominance owed to his closest potential rivals on pace being tucked up behind slower cars. Silverstone next up, which is a very different circuit to Valencia, should give us a clearer sense of how the land really lies.

But without wishing to play the bad fairy at the christening, do you ever suspect that the close and unpreditable 2012 we've been enjoying may be about to come to an end?

European GP Report: Alonso the street fighting man

Races at Valencia are boring, right? No one can pass there anyway. You can't win a Grand Prix these days unless you start at the front, certainly not at Valencia. Fernando Alonso starts eleventh on the grid? No hope from there. Certainly if it doesn't rain. He said so himself. Indeed, he said not even a podium is possible. And he can't rely on attrition; modern F1 cars almost never break down.

Well never let it be said that in F1 things can be foreseen with confidence; all of these things turned out to be wrong today. Whatever ration there is for exciting Grands Prix at each venue was clearly saved up by the Valencia street track for each of the last four years and all dispensed liberally in the race this afternoon.

Fernando Alonso was at his brilliant best
to take his second win of the season
Credit: Ryan Bayona / CC

In the most unlikely of locations we were treated to an improbable and incident-packed race, even by the exalted standards of the 2012 season. For much of the way you didn't know where to look, such was the concentration of things happening. And at the end of it all home hero Fernando Alonso took the flag first, after a combative and rapid drive up from what looked a forlorn 11th place on the starting grid, a performance that must be among even his very best ever. There was not a dry eye in the house.

Of course, eight rounds in it ends the unprecedented run of no driver winning more than one race this year, but such was the quality of Fernando's drive I will forgive him for that. And on a day that closest championship rivals Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel didn't score he now leads the drivers' table by a clear 20 points. It also, curiously, is the first home victory for an F1 driver since Felipe Massa took the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2008.

Valencia Qualifying: Seb stops the silliness

The Monty Python fans among you may recall a Sergeant-Major character who, when a sketch got (typically for Python) too madcap, would stride in front of the camera to order 'Stop that! It's silly!', thus bringing the tomfoolery to an abrupt close. It's tempting to see Sebastian Vettel in a qualifying hour as adopting a similar role these days. Not for the first time this season it looked late on that we'd get an unexpected pole sitter, as first Romain Grosjean then Pastor Maldonado topped the timing screens as the clock ticked down tantalisingly in the final session. But then, again not for the first time, Seb emerged at the last possible moment to remind them and everyone else of harsh reality by claiming pole, and claiming it by a distance.

Sebastian Vettel takes yet another pole -
bringing him level with greats Jim Clark and Alain Prost
Credit: Morio / CC

As argued before on this blog, even at this early stage of his career and of his life it surely is beyond contention that Seb is one of the best practitioners of a single qualifying lap that the sport has ever seen. Today's pole is his 33rd ever, which brings him equal in the record books with Alain Prost as well as with the legendary pole-claimer Jim Clark, who held the all time record for over twenty years. And it's only taken Seb a handful more races to achieve this mark than it did Jimmy (89 vs. 72).

And today all of Seb's magisterial qualifying qualities were on show: his lap was immaculate despite it being last chance saloon, and he found pace from thin air it seemed. All the way through qualifying (and indeed all the way through the weekend) there was almost nothing between the competitors' best times; the top 10 in Q2 was covered by just over two tenths of a second. But in his final effort Seb managed to dip under the bar set by his rivals by a full three and a half tenths of a second. A lifetime in F1 terms, even longer than that in super-competitive 2012.

Valencia Preview: F1's ugly duckling

It's by no means melodramatic to say that the Valencia stop-off isn't the most popular one on the F1 calendar. It's become F1's equivalent of the ugly duckling: one that its very mention at best results in indifference, at worst vitriol, among many fans. It's one that is invariably on the tip of many tongues when the 'which F1 circuit would you like to see dropped' question is raised.

So, why is this? On the face of it, you could say the venue has a lot going for it. It is in an exciting and vibrant city, it can boast a home hero who pulls in a large and passionate crowd, and a track layout that has plenty of big braking zones that should encourage overtaking. A while it doesn't really have a quick corner worthy of the name the same can be said of many circuits F1 visits, such as Canada and Singapore (two very popular stop-offs). And, contrary to popular belief, the circuit is a challenging one for drivers.

Perhaps it all demonstrates the importance of an F1 round as a holistic event, with off-track maybe as important as on-track. While the Canada and Singapore rounds have unique and electrifying surroundings and atmospheres, F1 pitched up in Valencia for the first time in 2008 to find not the 'new Monaco' that had been promised, but a circuit in a rather rough-around-the-edges and on-the-decline industrial port that had its back turned on it by the wider city somewhat, all far away from Valencia's attractive and buzzing centre. And apparently things haven't improved hugely since.

Related to this, TV shots rarely provide obvious and memorable landmarks and reference points in the surroundings, and instead concentrate on the inexorable walls around the track. This, combined with a rather repetitive, stop-start layout, makes the track to the viewer seem rather samey and unappealing. Alan Henry in Autocourse last year said the Valencia track: 'looks like a rather run-down, faux Indycar circuit - a sort of Long Beach without the glamour'.

European GP Report: No one can fight Seb's Bull in Valencia

Sebastian Vettel wins. Getting kind of used to typing that. I'd be annoyed if there wasn't so much to admire about the boy. Yes, Seb took the honours in the European Grand Prix in Valencia, making it his sixth win in eight rounds (and he came a close second in the other two). As for Seb's claiming of his second driver's championship this year, short of falling over getting out of the bath it's surely a case of when rather than whether.

Vettel was in command in Valencia

I got back from Valencia (had a good time, thanks for asking) to encounter lots of 'boring' talk about the race. I have to say I don't agree. Partly this is because I take the Murray Walker view that there's no such thing as a boring F1 race (only processional ones), but I also thought there was much to admire in Valencia last Sunday.

Most prominently was the performance of Seb. This was no grim clinging to the lead seen from him in Spain, Monaco and Canada. Vettel was in command in Valencia, and concocted the perfect mix of speed, composure and sympathy to his Pirellis. He once again scampered away from pole at the start, and was upwards of two seconds clear of team mate Webber in second place after three laps. From then on he went as fast as he dared, edging out his lead tenth by tenth while keeping his tyres in shape, and immediately responding to whatver brief challenge burgeoned behind him. And then in the final laps he showed what he could really do, shaving the walls and setting some fastest laps, and finished ten seconds up the road from Fernando Alonso, his nearest challenger. It's hardly news, but it's worth repeating the extent that Seb has the winning from the front thing down to a nicety. And all this at a track that (again) wasn't meant to suit the Red Bull, on a weekend that the new fangled ban on changing engine mapping between qualifying and the race was supposed to trip the Bulls up, and Seb was under some scrutiny after his last lap goof up in Canada. At this rate, not even the much-vaunted ban of off-throttle blown diffusers for Silverstone will cause the slightest hesitation in his or Red Bull's stride.