The 2018 Azerbaijan F1 Grand Prix was chaotic, exhilarating affair. I was vacationing at Chateau de Lalande in the middle of rural France when the email from my publisher arrived asking me to cover the race. I had to scramble to arrange a visa, flights and hotel. I arrived in Baku on Friday morning, collected my media pass and went to the track. As I came directly from holiday, I didn’t have all my usual race kit, specifically, I had only one camera body. I decided to use me 14-24mm lens for the first practice session. My intention was to capture atmospheric images of the cars in this very unique location. All was going well until, while shooting at turn 4, Max Verstappen lost it going into the corner. While I was in the perfect position to capture events, the wide angle was the wrong lens to show any detail of the crash and Verstappen examining his stricken car. I hurried back to the media centre, annoyed at missing a golden opportunity, I replaced the wide angle with my zoom lens and headed towards the old town.

Being a street circuit, Baku has some unique challenges for a photographer. Most of the track is lined with high protective fencing. There are few opportunities to photograph the cars without obstructions. One of these is directly in front of the historic city walls dating back from the 11th century. The contrast of historic buildings and high-tech race cars create dramatic images. For Free Practice 3 I, along with two other photographers managed to get on a roof a multiplex cinema that was adjacent with the track. We perched on the edge of this crumbling building shooting the cars directly below us. Exhilarating.

At turn 5 I had noticed the cars were flying off the high curb before turning sharply millimetres before the wall and then disappearing down the straight. For Qualifying positioned myself in line with the wall and lay in wait for an overzealous driver, to attack the corner too aggressively, lose it and come into contact with my wall. Fortunately for the drivers, non-did so. Vettel produced a flawless lap in Q3 to put himself on pole position. He was foxed by Liberty Media’s latest initiative to bring the drivers closer to the fans. After his final lap, he parked his car under the podium in the usual spot, forgetting that he should have parked it on start / finish straight with where Lewis and Valtteri were waiting for him.

I agonised over my position for the start of the race. I felt there would be drama around turns 2 and 3, however it was nearly impossible to get to these spots from the grid and once there, you had few options. I opted instead to stand on the photographer’s tower at the end of the start finish straight and hope there would be carnage in turn one. It is an incredible place to photograph the start from, not only do you have the best view available, but you are surrounded by some of the best photographers in F1 all providing their own unique and completely un-printable commentary. The drivers predictably decided to have their conflagration at turn 3 and several laps of safety car proceeded. I moved from the tower towards turn 2, transfixed by aggressive, combative driving form the two Red Bull drivers. Daniel had been jovial all weekend, buoyed by his incredible result last time out in China. Max however appeared to be under a cloud of determination or was it anger. He had already put his car into the wall once this weekend and when I saw him in the paddock and at the driver’s parade, he had that possessed domineer which said to me that he was going to either drive the nuts off his Red Bull or….

With the Red Bull not having the pace to compete with the Ferrari’s and Mercedes, and even the Renaults at times, and neither frustrated driver prepared to give an inch the end result was almost inevitable. I was on my way back to the pits for the end of the race and decided to try one more shot from start finish straight. I poked my lens between the barriers and almost immediately saw the Red Bulls close to each other on the straight. Daniel had made up a lot of time following his pit stop and was on fresh rubber. The cars were weaving on the straight, Daniel disappeared from my view behind Max, the next thing there was a cloud of smoke, Max’s rear end lifted un-expectedly high and he spun. Daniel went flying past in a cascade of sparks and smoke. I ran over to the stricken Red Bulls, Daniel climbed sheepishly out of his car, Max lingered a bit longer ensuring that the two would not confront each other.

I headed back to the pits, but the drama was not over. Bottas had played the perfect strategic race and was leading at the restart. Vettel made an ill-fated lunge to try and claim the lead but ended up losing several places. It looked set for Bottas’ first win of the season only for the cruellest of fates in the form of a carbon fibre fragment to puncture his tyre and rob him of a well-deserved win. Instead, Lewis Hamilton appear as a very unlikely winner. Taking the time to console the stricken Bottas which delayed his appearance on the podium to claim an opportunist win number 63 from a feisty Kimi Raikkonen and over joyed Sergio Pères in third.