F1 Paddock Notebook - Azerbaijan GP Saturday

- It was cold late in the afternoon this Saturday in Baku - so cold that the TV reporters were asking FOM’s chief press officer Luca Colajanni for heaters! And therefore probably too cold for trying to go through Q2 with medium tyres, especially as they had such a big gap to the softs in Azerbaijan – close to an estimated 1.5s – and it would be always something tricky for drivers to deal with, having the walls so close. Charles Leclerc ended up in the wall and took all the blame to himself, calling himself “stupid”, but still managed to get through on the Mediums.

- It was a costly mistake as Sebastian Vettel went to Q3 without the possibility to have a wingman at Ferrari, as he and Charles had even practiced taking the tow, something worth up to 0.5s in laptime in Baku. The German recognised this was one of the contributing factors for his failure to take pole in Q3, as well as not being able to put heat in the Soft tyres.

- This left the Mercedes drivers fighting for pole on their own. Valtteri Bottas managed to prepare his tyres better and beat Lewis Hamilton for the second time this season. But he knows that doesn’t mean an easy Sunday, not in Baku. “This race is not only about the pace," Bottas said. "We have to make sure as a team that we make the right decisions. And on my side, I have to stay out of the wall.” The wall and the debris, as the bitter memories from last year are in the back of his head. “You will see be going around everything I see tomorrow!”

- With a new addition to his collection of tattoos healing well on his left hand, Lewis Hamilton was apprehensive about the restarts tomorrow, after we’ve seen many different approaches from the teams to bring heat to their tyres. “That’s going to be a real issue tomorrow. If we have a restart, you either decide to pit or to deal with it. But it’s going to make it much harder for us.”

- The happiest man in the media pen was Sergio Perez, claiming that he mastered tyre temperature challenge in qualifying to put the Racing Point car in an incredible fifth place. And the one who was leaving some journalists speaking to themselves was Kimi Raikkonen, irritated because of the traffic in his last attempt.

- Daniel Ricciardo stayed in the pen to watch Q3 and seemed to be impressed with how fast the top teams’ drivers could go at some corners. And when Bottas crossed the line with the fastest lap, he raised his eyebrows and just said: “Testicles”.

- At Williams, Robert Kubica was not a happy man, but not only for the crash itself in Q1. The chassis George Russell is using after the whole drain cover drama from Friday is the one the team was preparing to give to him in Spain. The Pole has been complaining about his car’s behaviour since Australia and, by the looks of it, will have to remain with the same one for the next few races at least.

- Still on the drain cover saga, the FIA explained that, in Baku, they cannot be weld, so the solution is to clamp them, which is not as guaranteed. The track did however give Williams a bouquet of flowers to apologise for the incident, which were sat in the team's motorhome.

- Out of the racing track, there is a lot of talk this weekend about the next year’s calendar. The Dutch Grand Prix is apparently done, but few people believe there will be a 22-race calendar. One of the endangered races is the Brazilian GP, where the promoters in Rio are pushing hard to take the race away from Sao Paulo. Interlagos cannot pay the same fees even as the European races, so the future of the race sits in a very delicate position. But Rio has no circuit, only a project and the promise of finding private funding, even though it’s not clear at the moment where this money would come from.