Is Verstappen a threat to Piastri and Norris in title race? - F1 Q&A

McLaren had a messy weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with championship leader Oscar Piastri crashing out on the first lap and Lando Norris only finishing seventh.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen took his second win in a row with another dominant victory.

Piastri's lead in the title race over team-mate Norris narrowed to 25 points, with Verstappen now 69 points adrift of the Australian.

BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions following the race in Baku.

After a bad weekend in Baku for both McLaren drivers, and Max Verstappen appearing to go under the radar, should Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris be worried about Max pipping them for the title? - Martin

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was warning about Max Verstappen's threat in the drivers' championship even before the Dutchman won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

After the Red Bull driver took pole position in Baku, Stella was asked whether he considered Verstappen a factor in the championship.

"A firm 'yes'," he said.

"We don't have to forget that, first of all, it's Max Verstappen. World champion for the last four years, in a fast car.

"There are races where McLaren may not enjoy any advantage from a competitiveness point of view. And also Lando and Oscar, they are always there, so they will not necessarily be maximising the points available.

"Sometimes there will be a little bit more points for Lando, a little bit more points for Oscar, so they may take some points away from each other.

"We are very aware of this aspect, but we let them race, because they both deserve to pursue their aspirations. Therefore, yes, Verstappen and Red Bull are in contention for the drivers' championship."

Inevitably, Stella reiterated his view after the race, when Verstappen's victory reduced his deficit to Piastri to 69 points.

But it's one thing being a naturally cautious F1 team principal who has to maximise his team's performance every weekend, and ensure they don't take their eye off the ball. It's another being an objective observer.

Realistically, the chances of Verstappen beating one of the McLaren drivers to the title are slim.

The gap is the equivalent of nearly three clear victories with only seven grands prix to go. To put it another way, Verstappen would have to close on Piastri at an average of just under 10 points a race to beat the Australian.

Possible, but not very probable. Even with the sprints in Austin, Sao Paulo and Qatar added into the equation.

McLaren are coming off two races on tracks that did not play to the strengths of their car. There is at least one more of those - Las Vegas - but several more where they should be strong again.

If Piastri and Norris deliver their best, or close to it, over the remainder of the season, they should easily be able to fend off Verstappen, even allowing for the fact that it appears Red Bull have made a step forward with their car.

If they keep delivering races like they both did in Baku, however, then, yes, of course they should be worried.

F1 president Stefano Domenicali commented recently that the YouTube highlights of the races are performing very well and he's considering shorter races. Is there anyone else within F1 management pushing for shorter races? Or the teams? - Ricky

The comments the question refers to came from an interview Domenicali gave to Italian media before the race in Monza earlier this month., external

They created headlines, but it's important to look at what Domenicali actually said.

He was clear that he intended for the number of sprint events to go up.

"Our surveys show the vast majority of the audience wants the drivers to fight for a result," Domenicali said. "To put it bluntly, they're tired of free practice. That's an objective fact we can't ignore."

The attention span of F1's newer audience came up. But did Domenicali say he was considering introducing shorter grands prix? Not really. That's an extrapolation.

He said that current grands prix "may be a bit too long for younger audiences".

"We're seeing on many of our channels that highlights do very well," he said. "For those of us who grew up with the current format, everything is fine as is, but there's a large segment that only wants to see the key moments.

"Things are going very well today, but precisely for that reason we must not rest on our laurels. We need to think about the next step."

I'm told that, yes, the number of sprint events will go up in the coming years - F1 is considering going as far as 12 per season, which would be half the calendar.

As for the remarks that have been interpreted as meaning he is considering shorter grands prix, those have been characterised to this writer as Domenicali a) being led by the question to a degree; and b) engaging in a bit of kite-flying to gauge reaction.

It seems what Domenicali meant in reality was that the sport has to think of the best ways to package the highlights of the races for various audiences, not that he intends to reduce the lengths of those races.

Inside F1, reaction from the drivers has been relatively positive - or at least neutral - on the increase in sprints. But it has been pretty negative on the idea of reducing the length of a grand prix.

There's also a bit of dubious reasoning involved in the idea that shorter grands prix would be the right way to respond to a demand to watch key moments.

Because where do the highlights come from? Longer races, which have time to ebb and flow, develop a narrative and have a span of time for events to happen within.

And what happens, generally, when races are shorter, such as sprints? Less incident. Which by definition would mean fewer highlights.

Equally, how long is a grand prix? About an hour and a half, give or take. About the same length as a football or rugby match. And is anyone calling for those to be shortened to pander to the attention span of younger audiences?

What is the difference between the tyre compounds? George Russell wanted a soft tyre recently and complained about this. How much performance advantage is there and to what extent do the drivers make the decision over the engineers? - Jason

The comments you're referring to were at the Italian Grand Prix, and actually Russell was saying he had wanted the medium rather than the soft for his final qualifying run, because he felt he could go faster on it., external

It was an example of the typical discussions between teams and drivers over tyre choice, which is always collective.

In Monza, Russell was an outlier. But a preference for the medium compound over the soft was the case for most drivers in Baku last weekend. Why? It will take a bit of explaining, so please bear with me.

Essentially, the difference between the three tyre compounds taken to each grand prix by Pirelli is how soft the rubber is. Hence the names - soft, medium and hard.

There are six compounds in all for the season, from the hardest, the C1, to the softest, the C6. Three are taken to each race. Pirelli chooses what it considers the most suitable tyres for each circuit depending on the demands of the track.

The tougher the track on tyres - whether down to the speed and length of the corners or the abrasiveness of the circuit or both - the harder the tyres need to be.

Generally speaking, the harder the compound, the less grip but the more durability.

In races, there is a crossover point between compounds, where the extra pace generated by the higher grip levels of the softer compound falls away and the harder compound becomes faster.

Teams decide their race strategy around this sort of information - determining which combination of compounds run in which order and for how long generates the fastest race time.

For qualifying, a driver usually wants the softest compound available. It's only one lap, so it should stand to reason that the softest rubber will give the greatest grip for that short distance.

What happened in Baku, though, was that the soft compound was slower over a lap than the medium. It was too soft, essentially.

The C6 is a new compound this year. It's deliberately very soft, and the idea behind introducing it was to try to generate more pit stops, and force teams away from the one-stop strategies that predominate in F1 at the moment.

Bluntly, it hasn't worked. The C6 can only be used at the tracks that place the lowest demand on tyres. It was first used at Imola, and then Monaco and Canada before Baku last weekend.

How tyres work varies from car to car. But generally teams have found that the C6 was marginally faster than the C5 at Monaco, but slower at all other races. Even for one lap.

A stat stuck out to me after qualifying - that the six red flags seen in qualifying this weekend beat the previous record of five set at grands prix in 2022 and 2024. Why have these record chaotic sessions all happened in the last few years? - Neil

In Baku last weekend, conditions were very tricky, with a powerful gusting wind and a sprinkling of rain.

F1 cars are very sensitive to wind, the buildings in Baku can create a kind of wind-tunnel effect, and the walls around the track are close.

Grip levels can vary significantly from lap to lap, so a driver can find that a speed at which he took a corner on the previous lap is simply impossible the next. That's what led to all the crashes.

The races that held the previous record - the 2022 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix and 2024 Brazilian GP - were similar.

Both sessions were wet, and the tracks involved, Imola and Interlagos, punish mistakes because they are 'old school' - narrow with walls close by, grass beside the track and gravel run-offs.

Why concentrated in the last few years? Perhaps a combination of circumstance, coincidence and the fact that the way F1 events are run in the context of safety continues to evolve?