Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc had a masterful showing in qualifying on Saturday, laying down a blistering lap to take pole for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Leclerc’s pace was over two tenths quicker than second place qualifier Sergio Perez, with a 1:41.359.
“It feels good, this one,” Leclerc said. “Obviously all pole positions feel good, but this one I probably did not expect it, because I thought Red Bull were stronger, especially in Q1 and Q2, I really struggled to see that we were faster, but then in the last lap, everything came together and I managed to do a good lap, so extremely happy… I’m really excited for tomorrow.”
Last year’s world champion Max Verstappen followed Oracle Red Bull Racing teammate Perez with a third place qualifying effort.
“You always take quite a lot of risk and push the car to the limit on a street circuit, but you also have to be happy with the balance of the car and I didn’t have that today,” Verstappen said. “It was difficult to find a good balance here, which means we’re lacking consistency in how you approach your lap. There’s still quite a bit of work to do.”
Carlos Sainz, who qualified 4th, had a glimpse of pole position in Q3 before Ferrari teammate Leclerc went .455 seconds quicker in the latter stages of qualifying to take the top spot.
George Russell wheeled his Mercedes to 5th position on the grid, with teammate Lewis Hamilton settling in 7th.
“It was an optimized session but being over a second from pole is not where we want to be, it’s probably the biggest gap we’ve seen this year,” Russell said. “It’s a tricky circuit, the most amount of ‘real’ corners we’ve experienced this season, so we have lots of work to do. The lap felt good, the car felt good but obviously the gap isn’t. We expect so much from ourselves and we’re working so hard to bring more performance, but definitely this weekend has brought out the strengths and the weaknesses from all of us.”
It was a rough qualifying session for the Haas F1 Team, with both drivers failing to advance out of Q1. Kevin Magnussen will start 16th, while Mick Schumacher will start last in 20th.