Victor had worked his way forward in the opening laps. A few sharp overtakes, a well-timed response to the chaos behind, and a steady pace through Baku's unforgiving corners had given him a teetering position. But since all that happened in the earlier chaos right after lights-out, it didn't count. He'd lost all as much as he'd gained. Thus, he remained in P10 even after fifteen laps.
Early on, the race is a zero-sum game. With the pack bunched tight, the rate of overtaking almost perfectly mirrors the rate of being overtaken. For every bold lunge into the first turns, a driver is likely shuffled back by another in the berserk, multi-car slipstream. However, once the field straightens into a high-speed line, the data becomes heavily skewed toward stagnation. The race settles into a follow-the-leader rhythm. Aerodynamic wakes make following impossible. And overtaking chances plummets.
