Formula 1 is heading east, and we're stopping off in Azerbaijan for the first of two consecutive street races.
Baku paradoxically mixes right-angle turns with incredibly high speeds on a track that sees drivers tour 6km of the capital city in under 110 seconds.
We're ready for the test. Are you? Here are five things to get you ready for this weekend.
East Meets West
Azerbaijan is the perfect location to head to after the traditional European summer season that forms the middle portion of F1's calendar.
The country sits at a crossroads of continents, with the lands spreading into Western Asia and Eastern Europe.
Part of the western border of the Soviet Union until 1991, Azerbaijan is a melting pot of history and heritage.
That ability to straddle many locations led to the first race around the Baku City Circuit not coming in the Azerbaijan GP.
Instead, it was the 2016 European GP where the sport was first welcomed by Baku, in a race where Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa brought Williams back a double-points finish.
Soft Slicks
Pirelli's C6 compound will make an appearance for only the fourth time in 2025 over this Grand Prix weekend.
Previously seen at Monaco, Imola, and Montreal, the C6 is the softest tyre in the Italian manufacturer's F1 arsenal and will give Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz the most grip possible.
It's a trio of soft-tyre choices, too, as the C4 will be used as the Hard, with the C5 as a Medium option.
Baku will be the final time the C6 will appear this season for the teams for teams to balance tyre life against outright speed.
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Photo Finish
Lance Stroll took Williams to a memorable podium finish in the inaugural Azerbaijan GP in 2017, but he still felt frustrated at the flag.
He held his nerve during a chaotic race, and was running in P2 during the final laps, but with a rapidly-closing Bottas behind.
The Finnish driver and Lance ended the race in a neck-to-neck sprint down the long pit straight, with the Mercedes man pipping us to a P2 finish by just 0.105s.
Nonetheless, Lance celebrated his career's first podium and was only two weeks away from making history.
He took his rostrum visit at 18 years, 7 months, and 27 days, with Max Verstappen just pipping him to the record at the same age, but 13 days younger in his 2016 Spanish GP victory.
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Capital of the Caspian
The Caspian Sea is the largest landlocked water body in the world, and, despite its name, is also Earth's largest lake.
So large is the Caspian, at 371,000 km² (close to 5x the size of Lake Superior), it could swallow almost all of Japan.
Azerbaijan boasts 713 km of the 7000 km of Caspian coastline, shared across five countries, and Baku is the largest city of them all.
It's very much a city circuit that we'll be racing around on Sunday, but be sure to see just how close to the coast the cars are when you see the helicopter shots on TV.
One Year Ago...
With Alex and Carlos bringing home five double-points finishes already in 2025, it's easy to forget how different things were in 2024.
We languished near the bottom of the Constructors' standings going into the weekend with just six points from the opening 16 rounds.
Alex and Franco Colapinto turned that form upside down, though. Franco shone in his second race weekend by reaching Q3 and dutifully followed Alex over the finish line in P8 while Albono secured P7.
Those 10 precious points more than doubled our season's tally, and represented 59% of all the points scored over the year.
Things are rather different in 2025, and we almost equalled our entire year's score in just the previous two races as we head to Baku.
Carbono will continue hunting for points as we seek to solidify our P5 position in the standings, with 86 points affording us a 24-point buffer to P6 that could quickly vanish if we rest on our laurels.
Azerbaijan 2025
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