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

Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton will collect their awards in Baku for finishing first, second and third respectively in the 2023 F1 standings

A controversial week in Formula 1 will conclude on Friday evening 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.

Forty-eight hours after stating it was looking into the matter, the FIA announced on Thursday that it had ended the investigation after concluding no confidential information was shared. All nine of Mercedes' rivals had a day earlier dismissed claims that that a complaint about the Wolffs had come from at least one of them.

Against this tense backdrop, a number of the sport's leading figures - including FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and F1 president Stefano Domenicali - will be in Baku on Friday for the awards' ceremony, which concludes the FIA's general assembly week.

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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.

Watch our 2023 Season Review live on Sky Sports F1 at 7:30pm on Friday, featuring exclusive interviews with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and Mercedes technical director James Allison. Stream F1 on Sky Sports with NOW