More Red Bull magic to come in S'pore?

There’s an old expression that I quite like. I have no idea where it comes from, but it runs like this: Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.

- David Tremayne

Racing Bulls' Kiwi driver Liam Lawson finishing fifth in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is certainly the best comeback story of 2025. PHOTO: REUTERS

(REUTERS)

It sounds like something grizzled trappers in the Rocky Mountains might have come up with.

But in Baku last weekend the thing that was suddenly rocky was McLaren, who sprang two of the season’s biggest surprises as something ursine came sniffing outside their door just — when it seemed they were due to clinch their second consecutive world championship for constructors.

The first shock was when drivers’ championship points leader Oscar Piastri crashed into a wall during final qualifying. Newsflash: Piastri doesn’t make mistakes. But, just to prove that it had not been an imposter at the wheel, he did it again. In the race. On the first lap... Was it something in the water?

Something he ate?

But, just as that might have seemed like manna from heaven for teammate Lando Norris, McLaren had their worst race since Miami 2023.

I never felt that we saw the MCL39’s true pace all through a weekend in which teams juggled tyre choices and high winds kept changing direction, on a circuit where the walls lie close and tend to get bashed at higher speeds than those in Monaco.