Baku City Circuit

How it began

The street circuit in central Baku was designed by Hermann Tilke. The first race here was held on 19 June 2016 under the name of the European Grand Prix; Nico Rosberg won it for Mercedes from pole position.

Since 2017 the round has been called the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The 2020 race was called off because of the pandemic, and it has been held every year since 2021. In 2023 Baku was where the sprint weekend format with a separate qualifying session for the sprint was tried for the first time.

The track

The 6.003 km lap, one of the longest on the calendar, has twenty corners. The straight along the seafront on Neftchilar Avenue runs for more than two kilometres and is one of the fastest stretches in the championship.

The contrast is the section around the walls of the Old City: at Turn 8 the track is about seven and a half metres wide, and the cars go through it in single file, climbing uphill alongside the fortress wall. With its mix of long straights and slow corners, teams run low downforce here, and races are often decided in the final laps.

Memorable races

On 25 June 2017 Sebastian Vettel drove into Hamilton behind the safety car and was penalised; Daniel Ricciardo won from tenth on the grid, and Lance Stroll, aged eighteen, stood on the podium for the first time.

In 2018 a puncture three laps from the end cost Valtteri Bottas the lead and Hamilton took the win, while Red Bull team-mates Ricciardo and Verstappen were both out after colliding with each other.

On 6 June 2021 race leader Max Verstappen had a tyre blow out on the straight five laps from the end; at the restart Hamilton went straight on into the run-off area, and Sergio Pérez won. Pérez won in Baku again in 2023, and on 15 September 2024 Oscar Piastri took the chequered flag first after a long fight with Charles Leclerc. Leclerc took pole here four years running, from 2021 to 2024.

The 2026 season

The 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix is scheduled for Saturday 26 September: the race is not on a Sunday. The season runs under the new rules — new power units with about half of their power coming from electricity, active aerodynamics, and eleven teams now that Cadillac has joined and Sauber has been taken over by Audi.