Baku

The Baku City Circuit is a 6.003 km anti-clockwise street layout with two very different halves. One half is flat, fast and open: the run along the Caspian waterfront and the roughly 2.2 km main straight on Neftchilar Avenue, where Valtteri Bottas was recorded at 378 km/h in 2016 qualifying. The other half is the walled Old City, where the road narrows to about 7.6 m at its tightest point and climbs past the Maiden Tower and the castle section at Turn 8.

The contrast makes setup a compromise. Teams trim wings for the long straight, then ask drivers to place the car millimetres from unforgiving walls in the Old City, where a small mistake ends a lap or a race. The long straight and the slipstream it creates produce more overtaking than the narrow layout suggests, and restarts here have a habit of reshuffling the field.

Formula 1 first raced in Baku on 17 June 2016, when the street circuit hosted the European Grand Prix, won by Nico Rosberg for Mercedes. The event took the Azerbaijan Grand Prix name from 2017. The early years were rough, with drain-cover and kerb problems in 2016, and the layout soon earned a reputation for chaotic races.

In 2017 Daniel Ricciardo won after starting tenth on the grid, with Lance Stroll taking a first podium for Williams in third. Lewis Hamilton won in 2018 and Valtteri Bottas in 2019. In 2021 Max Verstappen suffered a late tyre failure while leading, handing the win to Sergio Pérez. The 2020 race was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Pérez won again in 2023, Oscar Piastri won for McLaren in 2024 and Verstappen won in 2025. The 2026 race is scheduled for Saturday 26 September as round 15 of the season.