Max Verstappen, Red Bull to collect championship trophies at FIA 2023 prize-giving amid stormy F1 week

The FIA is staging its annual end-of-season motorsport-wide prizegiving in Baku on Friday; Max Verstappen and Red Bull to be crowned champions, while Lewis Hamilton confirmed as attending after finishing third in 2023 standings

A dramatic and controversial week in Formula 1 will conclude on Friday with the FIA prize-giving gala in Baku, when Max Verstappen and Red Bull will formally be crowned 2023’s champions.

The governing body’s showpiece annual end-of-season event, which recognises the success of drivers and teams from across motorsport and this year takes place in Azerbaijan, comes at the end of a week when the FIA and the sport, including the 10 teams, have been at public loggerheads over the former’s launch of a compliance investigation into Mercedes’ Toto Wolff and his wife Susie, the head of F1 Academy.

Against this tense backdrop, a number of the sport’s leading figures will be in Baku on Friday for the awards’ ceremony, which concludes the FIA’s general assembly week.

The event, which starts at 7pm UK time, will see Verstappen and Red Bull presented with their respective championship trophies after producing the most dominant seasons of all time.

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Christian Horner says Red Bull and AlphaTauri have ‘nothing to do’ with complaints made to the FIA alleging F1 Academy boss Susie Wolff exchanged confidential information to husband and Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.

Under F1’s regulations, the top three in the Drivers’ Championship are all required to attend the prize-giving event.

Sergio Perez finished as the distant runner-up to his team-mate Verstappen, with Lewis Hamilton an impressive third for Mercedes given their troubled 2023 car.

Mercedes have confirmed Hamilton will indeed be in attendance in Baku.

Hamilton skipped the event the last time he was due to attend in 2021 in the wake of the controversial finish to that season’s title fight with Verstappen and then-race director Michael Masi’s incorrect handling of the Safety Car regulations at the end of the race.

For his non-attendance, Hamilton paid a $50,000 fine after agreeing with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem that the money would go towards supporting a student from a disadvantaged background in achieving an educational qualification in motorsport.

The seven-time champion was not required to attend in 2022 after finishing sixth in the standings.

Baku has been a fixture on the F1 calendar since 2016 and is staging the end-of-year FIA assembly for the first time.

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