Ferrari heads to Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on a reshuffled Thursday-to-Saturday schedule

Formula 1 heads to Baku this weekend for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the fifteenth round of the season, on a circuit laid out on the streets of the Azerbaijani capital. The Baku City Circuit first appeared on the calendar in 2016, when the race was called the European Grand Prix, before becoming the Azerbaijan Grand Prix the following year, and it combines extremely fast sections with very tight parts between the buildings of the historic city centre. In the Old City the track is very narrow, with cars passing just centimetres from the walls and even a section with room for only one car at a time, while the final sequence of corners leads onto a straight of over two kilometres taken flat out to the braking zone for Turn 1. This year's race runs to an unprecedented timetable, with track action starting a day earlier than usual on the Thursday and the Grand Prix itself on the Saturday, to avoid clashing with the solemn occasion of Azerbaijan's Remembrance Day on 27 September.

The street circuit's characteristics have often contributed to action-packed races in Baku: in the nine Formula 1 events held so far, the Safety Car has been deployed twelve times, underlining the importance of maintaining a degree of strategic flexibility because a neutralisation can quickly change the complexion of a race. The street circuit's surface generally offers less grip than permanent venues and can lead to tyre graining, while wind is another variable as it can change in both intensity and direction as it funnels between the buildings at different parts of the circuit. Pirelli has selected the C3 compound as Hard, the C4 as Medium and the C5 as Soft this weekend. Traditionally Baku is a one-stop race, but the track layout and the possibility of neutralisations mean other scenarios are also possible, for example a Safety Car in the closing stages could make the Soft an interesting option for a short stint.

Giulia Alessandro, Ferrari's Logistics Infrastructures and Warehouse Manager, said Baku is managed in exactly the same way as a flyaway race, with a mixed configuration in which some materials travel by sea and others by air, and that switching from the all-road transport of the long run of European races is always a significant challenge. She said the most demanding period was the week immediately after the last European race, when the equipment had to be returned from Madrid while everything needed for Baku was prepared and air-freighted, leaving just two days at the factory before departure. Baku also kicks off an unexpected triple-header, because Sepang has been inserted between this race and Singapore, to be run as the Bahrain Grand Prix; Ferrari received enough notice to prepare different kits for each of the three destinations and managed the changes without resorting to emergency measures. Alessandro added that the real challenge will be Sepang itself, since Formula 1 has not raced there for many years, bringing unknowns on arrival plus particularly hot and humid conditions requiring very careful planning of set-up and operational activities.