The eighth round of the season is coming up starting tomorrow in Azerbaijan (is that how you spell it?). The circuit, design by Bernie’s favourite Arq.Tilke (who else?) winds through the downtown of capital city Baku. It’s 6kms in length, only Spa is longer, it’s made of a huge straight and many many 90 degree corners, it will be the fastest street circuit with lap times expected to be close to the 2 minutes mark. One issue stands out: between corners 8 to 11 the track is narrower than the width of 2 F1 cars. And then comes corner 15, which will be very fast and without run-off area.  Because it’s surrounded by concrete walls, this will be for sure the most expensive race of the season in terms of car repairs…

Going into the unknown, what teams do to attack a new circuit as unforgiving as this, is to spend the first day of practice with very high downforce loads, and once both car and driver start finding the limits, engineers start dialing less downforce until they reach the minimum possible drag for top speed in the long main straight. The final set up in layouts like this is to be as fast as possible in the straights even if the car is very slow in section with corners, it’s all a matter of defending position in the only place where overtaking will be possible.

Seems the silly season is already shifting into second gear: RIC will stay in Red Bull until 2018, and he was Ferrari number one target to replace RAI. Since that was the seat in the senior team SAI was going to be promoted to, talk now is that the young Spaniard is going to Renault. According to Niki Lauda Mercedes wants to retain ROS for another year pairing with HAM. Except for Kimi’s seat there are not really any openings in the top teams, but just in case BOT has not yet re-sign with Williams.He was in the picture to go to the Scuderia this year but Frank was asking too much money and, they say, Ferrari decided to wait until the end of this year when the Finn becomes a free agent. ALO will see the end of his contract with McLaren unill 2017, but very likely Belgian Vandoorne will replace the popular BUT. Just in case, enjoy Jenson’s racing for the rest of the season, these will probably the last 14 GPs left of his career.

Let’s see what surprises Baku has in store for us, this is definitely not a place to race F1 cars, which once more, will allow us to enjoy the amazing skills of the best drivers in the planet.

Until tomorrow