Well what a championship it's turning out to be. Although it started as it left off last year with continued Red Bull, and more precisely Max, dominance, McLaren's huge strides forward have brought Lando and Oscar right into play.

If Ferrari could show more consistency across a variety of tracks I think LeClerc and Sainz would also be putting more championship pressure on Max but at the moment they aren't. But let's pause on the championship and talk about Baku.

Lando has been so consistent in qualifying this year that I literally couldn't believe it when massively unlucky timing on a, debatable, yellow flag took him out in Q1. After a couple of other drivers got grid penalties it later became a fractionally better 15th place start but it truly looked hopeless for a championship points gain on Max, especially with him starting 9th places higher in 6th.

On the other side of the garage Oscar did a sterling job to put his McLaren on the front row but yet again the star of Baku qualifying was Charles LeClerc, as Baku turns out to be one of the Ferrari shining tracks of the year.

Baku has often been an entertaining race and this year it delivered one of it's best yet. With so little to choose between Charles and Oscar, and truly outstanding driving and race etiquette from them both, the result was lap after lap of excitement.

If that wasn't enough an, on form, Perez was right with them until nearly the end and once Sainz found a rhythm in clear air, that brought him back into play.

With a hand full of laps to go Charles tyres hit the cliff and he finally slipped back from Oscar, Perez was all over him as they came over the line to start their penultimate lap. But perfect placing of his car compromised Perez and Sainz was right there on the perfect racing line to sweep past Perez out of turn 1.

But as Sainz also moved alongside LeClerc it was Perez's turn to get the better racing line and as they ran side by side the inevitable finally happened and they touched tyres.

Although the pundits initially put the blame with Sainz it always looked more like a racing incident to me and after analysing all the data that was the final conclusion of the stewards with no penalties given out, but equally no race finish for either of them.

So in the end Oscar took the win, with Charles second, and a very surprised and bemused George Russell completing the podium.

Meanwhile slightly back from the front Lando maxed out his hard/medium tyre strategy by closing in on Max over the final 10 laps on his fresher/softer tyres to steal 4th place from him (after the Sainz/Perez retirements) and from a neutrals perspective (not me!!) it brings the championship even closer.

With over 200 'race win' points still to play for, Max's 59 point lead over Lando looks far from secure...

🏆 COME ON LANDO 🏆

Sorry I did say I wasn't neutral!! 😈