Mercedes and Red Bull are pointing fingers at each other, but who is really the fastest?

Just like in Monaco, Mercedes is not up to the mark in Azerbaijan when it comes to the fastest times during the first two free practice sessions. Lewis Hamilton found himself a full second behind Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas was another second behind.

Worst Friday by far

In the first free practice session Max Verstappen was still the fastest man on track, but in the second free practice session he was narrowly beaten by Perez. Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin was therefore not happy after the second free practice. "Today was by far our worst Friday," he told Sky Sports F1. "Our biggest problem seemed to be the single lap; we're way off our normal positions so clearly we need to find something really important there."

On the speed in the longruns, Shovlin is slightly more positive. "That didn't go too bad. Still quite a bit behind Red Bull but we were still there. So there is still a lot of work to do and we are planning an extensive analysis and simulator programme to try and understand some of these problems, but we clearly have a lot to do."

Marko points to Mercedes

At Motorsport-Magazin.com Helmut Marko however paints a completely different picture of the proportions in Baku. "In the longruns they [Mercedes] were just faster," said the Red Bull advisor. "They had problems in the tight corners, but we expect them to have solved that tomorrow."