Valtteri Bottas has started seven Azerbaijan Grand Prix races and finished all seven. He has also taken everything he owns at this circuit from just two of them.
Forty three points, one win, one pole and two podiums, all banked in 2017 and 2019. The other five visits produced nothing whatsoever.
Two afternoons that account for the entire record
The first one was immediate. He qualified second for his opening Baku race in 2017 and finished second, eighteen points on the board at the first attempt in a race that took most of the field apart.
2018 should have added to it and did not. He started third and a puncture turned the afternoon into fourteenth place and nothing at all.
2019 is the day the record is built on. Pole on Saturday, the win on Sunday and twenty five points, still the only Azerbaijan victory and the only Azerbaijan pole of his career.
Everything after that is a flat line. Tenth on the grid and twelfth at the flag in 2021, still with Mercedes. Then the Sauber years, badged Alfa Romeo and later under the team's own name: eleventh, eighteenth and sixteenth, from fifteenth, thirteenth and sixteenth on the grid.
Four consecutive Baku weekends without a point, and no serious sign of one.
Valtteri Bottas'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 | 2 | P2 | 18 | Mercedes |
| 2018 | 3 | P14 | 0 | Mercedes |
| 2019 | 1 | P1 | 25 | Mercedes |
| 2021 | 10 | P12 | 0 | Mercedes |
| 2022 | 15 | P11 | 0 | Alfa Romeo |
| 2023 | 13 | P18 | 0 | Alfa Romeo |
| 2024 | 16 | P16 | 0 | Sauber |
A winner who cannot get back to the points
Seven starts, seven finishes. At the Baku City Circuit, where cars disappear into walls with some regularity, finishing every single time is a genuine achievement, and it is the part of his record that has survived the move down the grid.
The rest has not. He is one of a small group of drivers who have won this race, and he has gone four visits without scoring a point at it. He lines up again on 26 September for Cadillac in the C26, yet to open his account in 2026. Baku has been kind to him exactly twice, which at this circuit is twice more than most.
