Welcome to The Briefing, where you can get a jumpstart on the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with our guide to the key topics.

Every race weekend, we’ll speak to one of our engineers to discuss the key talking points ahead of the upcoming Grand Prix and simplify them so that you can dive straight into the action with a better idea of what to expect and what you should be looking out for.  

This week, powered by Google Cloud, Cédric Michel-Grosjean will be talking us through what we can expect from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which is taking place significantly later in the year than we’re used to. This brings with it a lot of questions, most notably the weather conditions, but thankfully, we’ve got plenty of time to work with in practice, as Cédric explains.

Here’s what we’ll be working on and what you need to know…

1. We’ve got time to play with in practice, but we’ll need it…  

Very little is new on the MCL38 this weekend, which means our practice programme concentrates almost exclusively on setting up the car for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

September is a different time of year for us to be racing in Azerbaijan. The long-range forecast has suggested it’ll be a little hotter than what we’ve had in recent years when the race has been earlier in the season – but not enough to make track conditions greatly different to what we’ve seen before.

Before last year’s race, most of the track was resurfaced, so there may have been some evolution which we’ll have to learn. We’re expecting it to still have low micro-roughness, which means graining is a risk on the softest compound. Last year, in the Sprint race, we saw severe graining on the Soft tyre. This could be an issue again – especially today, when the track will be green.

The wind direction might be different at this time of year, and this is a place known to be very windy – but it doesn’t have a huge impact. Running through the city streets, most of the track is shielded by the buildings. It creates a channelling effect, with a tailwind in most corners, caused by the cars lapping, irrespective of the wind direction.

One change of having Azerbaijan as Round 17, rather than Round 4, is that we have a full suite of rear wings available, including the ultra-low Monza wing, which we tested in Italy on Lando’s car in FP1, but ultimately decided not to run. Despite the long, long main straight, it’s not really in our thoughts here.

The drivers also need to practice pit entry. It’s an interesting set-up, with an extra corner in the pit lane, designed to bring the car speed down, coming off the high-speed straight. Last year, with just a single practice session, there’s wasn’t a lot of opportunity to practice that – but it’s not something to be neglected, given how tight we expect Sunday’s race to be.

2. Selecting the right setup for the varied challenges of the Baku City Circuit

The run from Turn 16 to Turn 1 is almost 2km, and the speeds there are very, very high – but the Baku City Circuit also has a lot of grip-limited corners in the low/medium speed range, so we don’t want to take all the downforce off the car, just to be quick on the straight. It would cost us too much time in the corners.

We’re choosing between the low downforce rear wing that raced at Spa and Monza, and the medium-low downforce rear wing that ran in places like Miami and Imola. The bigger wing should be quicker – at least in Qualifying – but we also have to be competitive on end-of-straight speed to attack and defend. We’ll therefore be paying close attention to what everyone else is doing.

There’s some uncertainty about this, given everyone has made efficiency improvements since we were last in Baku, and also, last year this was a Sprint weekend, which limited everyone’s preparation. We’re therefore going to keep our options open by splitting the cars in FP1, running both wings and seeing where that leaves us.

This is, of course, a street circuit, and so most of the corners are defined by a wall, where the price of a mistake is quite high. It makes driver confidence very important, so we’ll want to make sure they’re comfortable with the downforce level – because there’s more lap time in having the drivers confident in the car, than in chasing ultimate theoretical lap-time.

Brakes, and particularly brake cooling, is always an interesting topic in Baku. There are a lot of short straights with heavy braking, which means the brakes get very hot and we need to have plenty of cooling – but with a lot of cooling, the cars will arrive at Turn 1 after the long straight with cold brakes and poor braking performance. There isn’t really a solution to this, and usually the drivers simply have to accept the car won’t feel great braking for T1. We will be doing some experiments to find the right compromise, including trialing different materials. 

3. Crossing the crown of the road and three-wheeling

While the resurfacing has created a smooth circuit, there are still some bumps with which to contend. With ride-height being crucial in these cars, we need to assess how bad the bumps are – and how much they have changed since 2023. There’s also the street circuit problem of crossing the crown of the road.

While permanent circuits are usually constructed flat, streets tend to crown in the centre of the road, to aid drainage. In Baku, this is a problem approaching Turn 15, when the cars cross the crown when moving from one side of the road to the other. There are also some adverse cambers, and a few kerbs to ride.

Three-wheeling tends to be a problem around many of Baku’s 90-degree corners, with the inside-front wheel unloading and coming off the ground. Obviously, this is a problem as the car loses grip from that tyre, and we’ll work on the mechanical set-up of the car to try to minimise this as much as possible.

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