Baku 2035: Mercedes Wins the Race, Red Bull Loses Another Layer on Its Personnel Balance Sheet

George Russell crossed the line ahead of Max Verstappen in Baku. Isack Hadjar delivered third place for Red Bull, while Kimi Antonelli — the championship leader — finished only fifth. Together those results pushed the gap between the two Mercedes drivers to 66 points with just three rounds left in the 2035 season: Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

Mid-race, a VSC reshuffled every pit window. The Azerbaijan Grand Prix organisers confirmed the signal came from Valtteri Bottas's incident on lap 38. But the detail worth recording from Baku lies elsewhere. Mercedes won the race on track, while Red Bull lost another layer on its balance sheet of people.

CONTEXT

Mercedes arrived in Baku with both cars fighting at the front. Antonelli led the drivers' standings, with Russell immediately behind. Red Bull still had enough pace for a podium, but only with one of its two cars; the other stopped in Q2. Ferrari, pushed into the centre of speculation for two months, has still issued no official statement about its team principal seat.

Behind the track, another negotiation is running. FOM — the commercial rights holder — is keeping the final three rounds on the calendar despite the conflict situation in the Middle East. The FIA merely ratifies that decision; calendar authority sits with FOM. Imola has been placed on standby to host the season finale on 4–6 December 2035, complete with insurance terms and pre-drafted logistics.

ANALYSIS

Do the arithmetic before anything else. Three rounds remain, each worth a maximum of 26 points for a single driver. That is 78 points still on the table. The current gap is 66. Antonelli needs only 10 points across three rounds — one top-five finish — to secure the title, no matter whether Russell wins all three remaining races. That margin turns the next three weeks into an administrative formality rather than a contest.

For Mercedes, the value sits elsewhere. A team with two drivers scoring consistently optimises its prize-money column in both championships while holding its negotiating position with sponsors into the next cycle. Based on my experience following these races and seasons, I always ask one question in front of a beautiful result: is that revenue reinvested into the technical structure, or does it drain into short-term bonuses? Mercedes over the past three seasons has chosen the former.

Then there is Red Bull. A podium still arrives, but the price is an organisation thinning out. Adrian Newey left the chief technical officer role, Jonathan Wheatley left the sporting director position, Will Courtenay left the strategy department. Those are not three names; they are three layers of operational memory inside a race team. When a senior engineer departs, a waiting period follows — often up to twelve months — before the replacement can sign anything at all. During that window, the team still has to race.

Add the calendar variable. If Qatar and Abu Dhabi cannot run as scheduled, Imola will carry the finale in early December. Logistics, insurance and broadcast rescheduling costs for a relocated event sit outside any team's annual budget line. They are exceptional costs, and in the cost-cap era every exceptional cost takes development time away from the following season.

CONTRARIAN ANGLE

The crowd is aiming its cameras at a 66-point gap. That is a data point easy to sell to viewers: a chase, a comeback script, a young driver on the road to a title. But the thing that genuinely reprices these teams over the next two seasons sits in the lines few people read.

From an asset perspective, Red Bull is selling off its own stability, piece by piece. On-track speed is something money can buy back; operational memory is not. The history of teams that left the grid is fairly ruthless: decline or dissolution does not come from one losing season, but from three consecutive years of hiring the wrong people. A race team can stop taking podiums in a single summer, yet the memory of it lives on inside contracts that were never settled.

Meanwhile, the story of Christian Horner taking the Ferrari team principal seat is a media bubble. Its origin is an interview answer, not an offer. The spokesperson in this case is the beneficiary: a team principal who has just left his post and is promoting a book. Structurally, Ferrari operates on a model in which the chairman and the CEO always outrank the team principal. A demand for full control cannot be met in Maranello. The team principal market has no off-season, only a calculation season — and this particular trade belongs in the low-probability, high-noise bucket.

There is one more point analysts tend to skip. Before Baku, several claims about an upgrade package circulated. After the race, not a single on-track data set — lap time, top speed, tyre correlation — was published to confirm it. In my experience, when a technical story arrives without a data table attached, it is almost always a media product.

TAKEAWAY

A driver's value lies in how the market reprices him after each season, not in the contract currently running. Antonelli repriced himself through the 2035 season with pace and consistency; Red Bull is repricing itself in the opposite direction. Over the next two seasons, whoever keeps their people keeps their speed. Every record begins with a lap, and ends with a number on a spreadsheet.