F1 in Azerbaijan: That was almost a close-run thing

Formula 1 raced on the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, this past weekend. Although the race predates Liberty’s acquisition of the sport by a few months, it’s a rather good microcosm of the sport as it exists today. The track is a real challenge; it takes place on dusty city streets lined with concrete walls and through a medieval fortress gate, followed by a 1.4-mile (2.2 km) flat-out blast to the finish line, with gusts of wind from the Caspian Sea a block away. It’s interesting to look at Baku’s mix of modern and classical architecture sharing the stage with a massive hospitality and pit lane complex. And since it wouldn’t be F1 without some controversy, this year the race was held a day earlier than normal after F1 switched up its schedule to avoid clashing with Azerbaijan’s celebration of its recent war with Armenia—it’s almost as if Bernie Ecclestone had never left.

The proximity of the walls leaves very little …