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Talking points ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Will Lewis Hamilton get his first win of the season in Azerbaijan?

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Following the drama of the Chinese Grand Prix, the Formula One circus heads to Baku for the fourth round of the season.

Defending champion Lewis Hamilton will be bidding to get his stuttering title charge back on track after three winless races.

Here, Press Association Sport takes a look at the big talking points ahead of Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

1. Will Hamilton and Mercedes bounce back?

2. Ricciardo’s the talk of the town

3. Pressure is on hot-headed Max

Max Verstappen has long been billed as the heir to Hamilton’s throne, but the 20-year-old Dutchman will need to deliver an error-free performance this weekend after his troubled start to the campaign. Verstappen has already collided with both Hamilton and Vettel this year, with Niki Lauda, the three-time world champion and non-executive chairman of Mercedes, calling on Verstappen to address his gung-ho style. Verstappen’s edge-of-the-seat driving has been a huge success story for the sport in recent seasons – helping to draw in a new generation of fans – but his mistakes have cost both him and Red Bull dearly. Team principal Christian Horner – on the surface, at least, unperturbed by his driver’s actions in China – will not want a repeat on Sunday.

4. Times are changing

The third edition of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has been brought forward from June to April, but, despite the change in schedule, race organisers will desperately be hoping for a repeat of last year’s fireworks. The opening race on the streets of Azerbaijan’s capital city in 2016 was something of a dud, but the ensuing instalment will live long in the memory following a race notable for Vettel deliberately ramming into Hamilton, a series of other crashes, and Ricciardo claiming the most unlikely of wins. More of the same this year please, gents.

5. McLaren expecting no improvement

McLaren may be fourth in the constructors’ championship, with Fernando Alonso already having scored more points this season than throughout the entirety of last year, but Britain’s most successful F1 team are unlikely to have been enthused by what they have seen so far this season. Their recent qualifying displays suggest they possess only the seventh best package on the grid, and, while the brilliance of Alonso continues to extract the very best from his under-performing car – indeed he fought his way past Vettel on the penultimate lap to finish seventh in Shanghai – the double world champion insists he is not expecting any improvement in Baku this weekend. “We know our limitations and where we need to improve our package, and, although we bring parts to test to every race weekend, we aren’t anticipating a radical change in our performance in Baku,” Alonso, 36, said.

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