Fernando Alonso has never finished higher than fourth at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He has also never failed to finish one. Seven starts, seven chequered flags and points in six of them, which at Baku is a quieter kind of achievement than a podium but a rarer one.
Forty two points from seven visits, almost all of it collected in cars that had no business scoring. This is the clearest example on the grid of a driver taking exactly what a weekend offers and not a place less.
Ninth from nineteenth, and a best of fourth
His first Baku start, in 2017, is still the one worth pointing at. He qualified 19th in a McLaren that spent that season breaking down, and finished ninth. Ten places gained at a circuit where the received wisdom is that you start where you finish.
2018 brought seventh from twelfth, again in a car that was nowhere. Between them those two afternoons produced eight points nobody expected to exist.
The Alpine years were steadier: sixth in 2021 from eighth on the grid, seventh in 2022 from tenth. Never spectacular, never wasteful.
The high-water mark is 2023, his first Baku weekend with Aston Martin. He started sixth and finished fourth, in the season when that car was genuinely quick, and it is the one year a podium looked plausible rather than fanciful.
Sixth followed in 2024. Then 2025, the outlier: eleventh on the grid and fifteenth at the flag, his only blank Azerbaijan weekend in seven attempts.
Fernando Alonso's Azerbaijan GP record year by year
Every Azerbaijan Grand Prix start, with the grid slot it came from and what it was worth.
| Season | Grid | Finish | Points | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 19 | P9 | 2 | McLaren |
| 2018 | 12 | P7 | 6 | McLaren |
| 2021 | 8 | P6 | 8 | Alpine |
| 2022 | 10 | P7 | 6 | Alpine |
| 2023 | 6 | P4 | 12 | Aston Martin |
| 2024 | 7 | P6 | 8 | Aston Martin |
| 2025 | 11 | P15 | 0 | Aston Martin |
The value of simply being there at the end
No win, no pole, no podium and no fastest lap. What there is instead is seven finishes from seven starts at the circuit most likely to deny you one. Only Lewis Hamilton matches that clean sheet over a comparable run of Baku starts.
At 45 he goes again on 26 September in the AMR26. On current form a points finish would be a good day, and on this circuit, with this driver, a good day has a habit of turning into something better.
