Is Baku’s 220mph street track F1’s Macau?

"The speed is higher in the land of fire", so claims the advertising for Formula 1's newest grand prix, and there's a good chance the new Baku city street circuit will produce new records for top straightline speed in F1 this weekend.

Already in the first free practice session for the European Grand Prix in Azerbaijan (yes, really!) Williams-Mercedes clocked 221mph (355km/h) on the main straight, with an aerodynamic tow. Carlos Sainz Jr, whose Toro Rosso uses an outdated Ferrari engine, managed 218mph thanks to a double tow following other cars in second practice.

That compares to a top speed of 220.3mph registered by the Force India of Sergio Perez in qualifying for last season's Italian GP at Monza. When the race engines are fitted for Saturday and cranked up to full power for Baku qualifying, that mark should be obliterated, and there's a good chance the 227.6mph clocked by Pastor Maldonado's Lotus in the thin air of Mexico last year could also be breached.

Ahead of first practice in Baku, many F1 drivers were comparing this place to Macau, but really it seems more like a cousin of Singapore, combined with Sochi's smooth asphalt, and a main straight that makes Monza's look piddly.

"You definitely have your heart in your mouth," says reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton. "We're arriving at some serious speeds - 220mph down the pit straight with DRS.

"Some of the corners you're basically driving towards the wall at crazy speeds and then having to judge the braking distances.

"It's a heavy braking circuit, a bit like Montreal mixed with a bit of Monaco, mixed with a bit of Valencia and a bit of Sochi.

"It's a real challenge to really be on the limit."

Baku is wide in most places, so does not encourage the sort of wall-skimming heroics that make places like Monaco and Canada so thrilling, but it is clearly a very fast street circuit, so in that sense is not too far removed from Macau.

The majority of the corners in the early part of the lap are relatively slow 90-degree bends with not much flow. But then the twisty section from Turns 7-12 carry the cars into a high-speed section through the old part of town.

This pales in comparison to the mountainous middle section of Macau's famous Guia circuit, but the challenge of the just flat curves at Turn 13, and the tricky downhill off-camber left at 15, is still stretching the drivers' skill and concentration.

"It's extreme," says Renault's Kevin Magnussen. "We don't have anywhere as narrow as Turn 8. It's quite a cool, flowing section - you go over a crest in Turn 11, so you lose the car a little bit there, then you need to get far to the right before Turn 12, which leads onto a straight, so that's important.

"All this section is quite technical and challenging. And then you get Turn 13, 18 and 19 - they are just flat, but it is really fast.

"I can't think of any place on a street circuit that has a corner where we are doing 300km/h..."

And then you've got that monster start/finish straight, which offers the prospect of some very Macau-like slipstream racing.

"You come around 19 and you still can't even see the end of the straight," said Renault's Jolyon Palmer. "It's like, you do a curvy straight and then you still have the length of a China straight after that.

"It feels pretty massive. Overtaking will be very easy, if you have got the pace to do it."

And much of that pace will depend on engines. This is undoubtedly a power circuit. You need as much straightline speed as possible for that long drag from Turn 16 to Turn 1, and the shorter straight that links left-handers of Turns 2 and Turn 3.

You also need excellent traction, to help propel the car properly out of all those slow-speed corners, and you need confidence on the brakes to set up those corner entries properly and avoid leaking laptime away to lock-ups or a lack of commitment.

Over a single lap there is nowhere on the calendar more power and energy hungry than Baku. Over a race distance the expectation is that this circuit matches Montreal in terms of fuel and recovered energy use.

This should unsurprisingly be a good track for Mercedes, which has excellent traction and the best engine, so can run a bit more wing than rivals and not be penalised.

It should suit the low-drag Williams missile too. Force India (another car lacking downforce but with lots of grunt and a very positive front-end on turn-in) also looked particularly strong on Friday afternoon.

PURE PACE RANKINGS

1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m44.223s
2. Force India (Perez) 1m45.336s
3. Williams (Bottas) 1m45.764s
4. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m46.027s
5. Red Bull (Verstappen) 1m46.068s
6. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m46.219s
7. McLaren (Button) 1m46.234s
8. Haas (Grosjean) 1m46.681s
9. Renault (Magnussen) 1m47.329s
10. Manor (Haryanto) 1m47.487s
11. Sauber (Ericsson) 1m47.772s

Hamilton went off at Turn 16 during his 'qualifying' run, so didn't put his best sectors together, but still lapped well clear of the rest, including Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, who pulled off the circuit when his tired practice engine lost drive during the second session.

Rosberg's best first sector on super-soft tyres was three tenths down on what Hamilton did on the soft compound, and he dropped time compared to his own soft run in the final sector, so that ultimate 0.690s gap to Hamilton is certainly exaggerated.

"I had the disadvantage of having to run the medium tyre this afternoon, whereas Lewis was always on softer tyres so he could get up to speed quicker," explained Rosberg. "At a new track like this it's a bit more penalising, but I have plenty of time to work on one-lap speed. I'll get there."

Rosberg was surprised at how far back Ferrari and Red Bull were on Friday, considering how fast each team has been at the two most recent races in Monaco and Canada.

Though not quite as blessed as Mercedes, we know Ferrari has enough engine performance to be better than sixth fastest on any given circuit, while Renault has made enough progress to propel Red Bull much closer to Mercedes if it gets everything right.

But both the SF16-H and RB12 are quite gentle cars on the Pirelli tyres and therefore struggle to get them working properly when smooth track surfaces and cold weather combine. The daytime is hot in Azerbaijan, but the track cooled significantly by the time second practice came around.

"We struggled to make the tyre work for one lap," said Kimi Raikkonen, who had to park his Ferrari with a suspected ERS problem in the closing stages of practice two.

"We need to find something to get the grip out of them. The single laptime is not there, but as we do more laps it seems to get better and better. The balance was not too bad."

Red Bull has an efficient chassis, excellent brakes, likes the heat, and normally thrives in the sort of corners that proliferate this track. But Canada-esque tyre temperature struggles seem to be severely hampering Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen at present.

"We weren't hiding much today at all," said Ricciardo, who was two seconds off the pace in 10th. "With these new surfaces, if you can get that tyre to work and find that next step of grip it can equate to a big chunk of laptime.

"We have to find it, but we should be a lot closer."

Force India, Williams and Toro Rosso have stepped into the breech. Based on its Canada form and the way the FW38 works the tyres, Williams should remain in the hunt behind Mercedes if it makes no mistakes. It proved in Canada that it is particularly adept at working the Pirelli tyres well in cool conditions.

Force India shares that benefit of Mercedes power - "the right kit in the back", as Nico Hulkenberg put it - but the VJM09 usually lacks a bit for rear grip, and may slip back once everyone has their race engines fitted, if Ferrari and Red Bull can sort their tyre problems, and if that lack of rear grip costs Force India more than the power can compensate for.

Toro Rosso is definitely lacking for power, given it runs an outdated Ferrari engine, and Sainz is not expecting to continue driving the fourth fastest car on a circuit with such long straights.

"With a one-year-old power unit I do not expect to be beating the Ferrari guys and Red Bulls," said Sainz, who admitted he was pushing hard on Friday and reckons the likes of Red Bull and McLaren will improve drastically when they trim more downforce from their cars.

"We are running not all the downforce we would like and it is making our life very complicated through sectors one and two, but we are not losing so much through sector three.

"We would love to run a lot more downforce because we have a lot of steps to put on the car, but we just cannot afford to run it because it would be quite slow on the straight.

"McLaren and Red Bull were running a lot. We need to be careful because many people will catch up."

McLaren-Honda's Baku weekend began strongly, with Fernando Alonso lapping fourth quickest in the first session. The MP4-31 has strong brakes, efficient aerodynamics to compensate for Honda's lack of power, and a revised ERS and turbocharger combination that makes better use of what power the car does possess.

But it is still exposed on such a power-hungry circuit, so Jenson Button is expecting this to be a tough race for his team.

"This is probably the worst circuit for us on the calendar," he said, having outpaced Alonso to be ninth in practice two. "If we do a good lap we can still fight for Q3, but the race could be a tricky for us.

"In the last sector we were nine tenths off the Mercedes in FP1 and six tenths off the other quick cars. Difficult to really know what we can do, though..."

Rio Haryanto lapped faster than both Saubers and Jolyon Palmer's Renault in second practice, and was within two tenths of Magnussen too. This could be one of Manor's more competitive races thanks to that Mercedes engine.

Haas would ordinarily have expected a possible return to form had conditions remained hot, but another smooth surface and cool track temperatures mean it is still struggling to make the Pirelli tyres work properly.

LONG RUN RANKING (SUPER-SOFT)

1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m48.767s (4-lap average)
2. Williams (Bottas) 1m49.892s (5-lap average)
3. Force India (Perez) 1m50.044s (4-lap average)
4. Toro Rosso (Kvyat) 1m50.123s (7-lap average)
5. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m50.450s (4-lap average)
6. Haas (Grosjean) 1m50.746s (3-lap average)
7. McLaren (Button) 1m50.896s (5-lap average)
8. Sauber (Nasr) 1m51.288s (4-lap average)
9. Renault (Magnussen) 1m51.477s (5-lap average)
10. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m51.534s (3-lap average)
11. Manor (Wehrlein) 1m52.288s (3-lap average)

The tyre warm-up problems for Ferrari and Red Bull are pronounced over the longer runs too. Even if you average Max Verstappen's three best laps on the super-soft he is still only eighth fastest overall...

LONG RUN RANKING (SOFT)

1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m48.356s (3-lap average)
2. Force India (Perez) 1m48.885s (5-lap average)
3. McLaren (Button) 1m49.642s (4-lap average)
4. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m49.685s (5-lap average)
5. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m50.255s (4-lap average)
6. Williams (Massa) 1m50.409s (4-lap average)
7. Red Bull (Verstappen) 1m50.615s (2-lap average)
8. Haas (Gutierrez) 1m51.103s (5-lap average)
9. Manor (Wehrlein) 1m51.538s (5-lap average)
10. Sauber (Nasr) 1m52.561s (7-lap average)
*Renault did not complete long runs on the soft tyre

It will be interesting to see if Pirelli lowers its tyre pressure limits following overnight analysis, and whether that helps Ferrari and Red Bull.

The tyre supplier says it has to be conservative with its compound choices and set-up limits, because of difficulties in simulating the loads on this circuit and the unknowns of the asphalt due to the track's late completion.

It turned out to be ultra-smooth, almost Sochi-like, so a one-stop race is expected with these compounds. Degradation will be minimal; the challenge will be managing rear tyre wear with all those low-speed acceleration zones around the lap.

And finding a way to stop those Mercedes-engined cars, which should enjoy the advantage around F1's newest and fastest street circuit.