Track Torque: Baku City beckons
Rod Kinsey previews the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and shares his views on the recent Le Mans 24-Hour race.
THIS coming weekend sees the running of the second Azerbaijan Grand Prix at Baku City.
It is an unusual 6km track running anti-clockwise with 20 corners.
Mercedes are good here and won the race last year (Nico Rosberg), so we shall have to see what Ferrari can do about it.
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Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen are desperate to do well again in their red cars and we will only know once qualifying is over, who looks best to do the trick.
Lewis Hamilton is on a high and Valtteri Bottas is equally motivated to do his best.
It should be a great race between the top six cars.
I am therefore including both the Red Bulls in the main battle as we can expect Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen to be charging.
It will also be interesting to watch the two very quick Force India cars, driven by Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon as well as Nico Hulkenberg in the Renault and both of the Toro Rosso cars driven by Daniel Kvyat and Carlos Sainz Jr.
Other surprises could come from Felipe Massa in his Williams Merc and Romain Grosjean at Haas.
We will, of course, watch McLaren Hondas progress, wishing improvement upon them. The race takes place at 3pm on Sunday with qualifying on Saturday set for 2pm.
Last weekend saw some epic Le Mans 24-Hour racing at the Sarthe circuit, south of Paris.
It was a race of serious attrition for both Toyota and Porsche as Audi withdrew from racing this year.
For Toyota it was a disastrous weekend, after holding the lead and other top six positions during the early hours of the race.
Unfortunately their challenge gradually faded, with only one car running way down at the end of the race.
Porsche, on the other hand, with only two entries looked good up until the three-quarter stage, when the leading car developed oil pressure problems and retired, stranded out on the track.
The second Porsche had been problematic early in the race, having spent much time in the pits.
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It was then driven like a grand prix car from 56th position at the back of the field right to the front and won the race! It was something to behold.
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