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Charles Leclerc secured pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix for the fourth consecutive year, but can he finally convert that P1 slot into Formula One victory at this tricky circuit?
The Ferrari driver, fresh off of his Monza victory, couldn’t be caught in Q3, finishing 0.3 seconds ahead of Oscar Piastri. The McLaren driver edged past Carlos Sainz for the front row despite Piastri’s messy-at-times final flying lap.
The second row for Sunday’s race will consist of Sainz and Sergio Pérez, who has won twice at the Baku City Circuit. More notably, this is the first time the Mexican driver has out-qualified his teammate, Max Verstappen, all season. Red Bull has struggled with the car, and McLaren has gained ground in both championships’ standings, enough so that it had discussions about team orders after the recent races and will back Lando Norris.
With eight races and three sprints to go, Norris is 62 points behind Verstappen, and the gap should increase after Baku due to Norris dropping out in Q1 and Verstappen qualifying sixth. Only eight points separate Red Bull and McLaren in the constructors’ standings, putting pressure on Piastri to extract the maximum, given that both Red Bulls qualified in the top 10.
And then there are the two rookies, Haas’s Oliver Bearman (stepping in this weekend after Kevin Magnussen received a one-race ban) and Williams’s Franco Colapinto. Colapinto and teammate Alex Albon looked particularly strong in reaching Q3, and Bearman recovered from an FP3 crash to qualify 11th. Both drivers out-qualified their veteran teammates.
As the paddock prepares for the first of two street races during this doubleheader, we dive into the storylines ahead of the Azerbaijan GP.
Can Leclerc finally win in Baku?
Considering Ferrari’s fluctuating year-to-year form, winning four straight pole positions around a track as challenging as Baku is an impressive feat for Leclerc.
We know how good he is as a qualifying specialist, but this was a special lap, even by Leclerc’s high standards. “No chance for anyone else,” said his race engineer, Bryan Bozzi. “That was beautiful.”
Leclerc explained after qualifying that he had spent the first two sessions leaving extra room between his car and the beckoning walls before going all-out when it mattered in Q3. “The lap time came very nicely,” Leclerc said. “The car felt really good, and everything felt great. So it’s amazing to be on pole.”
It was a big turnaround for Leclerc’s weekend after he crashed in FP1 and lost more track time in FP2 due to a part issue. Riding off the high of his shock Monza victory two weeks ago, he has a chance to spool up more momentum — and potentially thrust himself into championship conversation again.
Leclerc knows the hard part is still to come. Much to his regret, he’s 0-for-3 in converting his previous Baku poles into a race win. The pace wasn’t there in the car in two of those races, and his engine failed in 2022. “Hopefully, tomorrow, the pace is there, and we don’t have anything that stops us to win it,” Leclerc said.
There is an unknown for Ferrari, given Leclerc could not complete any representative high-fuel running due to the FP2 setback. But with him on pole and Carlos Sainz in third, the team is in a solid position to capitalize on Norris’s Q1 exit and Red Bull being a step behind.
A rough outlook for Norris
Lately, all the momentum has been with Lando Norris in F1. The narrowing gap to Max Verstappen at the top of the drivers’ championship has fueled hopes of a shot at the title, leading to McLaren’s call on team orders ahead of Baku.
It came to a shuddering halt on Saturday in Baku as Norris failed to reach Q3 for the first time this season after a shock elimination in Q1, qualifying 17th. A yellow flag in the final sector of the lap forced Norris to abandon his effort, much to McLaren’s frustration, as the team questioned why it hadn’t been a white flag instead for the slow-moving Esteban Ocon.
Norris had to take it on the chin, describing it as “just unlucky” to Sky Sports after the session. His consistent form has meant that he has rarely needed a fightback this year.
One crumb of comfort for Norris is Baku’s reputation for unpredictable races, which led the promoters to coin the term ‘Baku syndrome’ last year. One-third of the podium finishers in Baku have come from outside the top five of the grid, while Daniel Ricciardo won from as far back as P10 in 2017.
Norris was less optimistic about his chances, even if the race pace shown by McLaren on Friday was strong. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy,” he said. “Following is pretty much impossible around here, and overtaking is a lot worse than everyone thinks. I hope I’m wrong, of course, and there’s plenty of chances. But I’m not expecting so.”
Should Verstappen struggle to advance from sixth on the grid, the Q1 exit may not prove so costly to Norris. But at a time when Red Bull is on the back foot, it’ll sting as another missed opportunity for McLaren in a season quickly filling up with them.
Are Verstappen and Pérez a threat?
Off the back of Red Bull’s recent struggles to understand where it went wrong with the development of its car, Max Verstappen seemed more upbeat than usual after Friday. He and Sergio Pérez were in the ballpark at the front, and a run at resuming ‘normal service’ from the start of the year looked possible.
It meant Verstappen’s sixth-place finish at the end of Q3 was disappointing. He suffered his first qualifying defeat against Pérez, who will line up fourth, since the Miami Grand Prix in May last year.
While trying to refine the car’s setup heading into qualifying, Red Bull made some changes that actually hurt Verstappen. They made him feel less connected to the tarmac and took away some of the confidence he’d been building up.
The problem was worst at Turn 16, the downhill left-hander that is all-important to set up the blast to the start/finish line. Verstappen lost the car completely mid-corner on his first run in Q3 and didn’t find much time on the second effort, limiting him to a sixth-place start.
“We thought that what we changed on the car going into qualifying would make it better, but unfortunately, it went the other way,” Verstappen said on Sky Sports after the session. “Sometimes that can happen as well. But it’s just a bit of a shame that was in qualifying.”
Red Bull can take positives from the session. It now appears to understand why it has underperformed recently. The new floor for this weekend has boosted both drivers. On Saturday, Pérez looked back to the form of the early part of the season. He put that partly down to the upgraded floor and was more hopeful of the race pace shining through tomorrow.
“I’m optimistic,” Pérez told Sky. “We saw yesterday we were more competitive, but we were also more competitive over a single timed lap. What we saw from Ferrari today was very strong. But hopefully tomorrow in the long race, things come more to us.”
Piastri’s big chance
One of the big storylines coming into the race weekend is whether McLaren needed to prioritize Norris, given the state of the championships. It decided to back the Briton, and, importantly, there’s buy-in from Piastri.
The decision came after the Italian GP, where the teammates engaged in an opening lap battle that cost Norris two spots. But it was a fair fight, according to the team’s internal rules. With Norris lining up near the back of the grid for Sunday’s race in Baku, the weight is on Piastri to keep McLaren within a stone’s throw of Red Bull. Both Red Bull drivers line up in the top 10.
Piastri pointed out after qualifying how Baku City Circuit “really rewards commitment.” He admitted to not maximizing the car during the first half of qualifying, but “the last laps in Q3, I knew I had a lot less to lose.” He got closer to the walls — sometimes too close — and it was enough to get him 0.119 seconds ahead of Sainz.
“It certainly wasn’t the cleanest,” the McLaren driver said about his second Q3 lap. “A few big moments in there and a couple of love taps with the wall. I pushed to get everything out of it that I could.”
Piastri is set for another battle with the Ferraris after their battle at Monza. But when asked which team has the faster car at Baku, the McLaren driver said it’s been relatively even throughout the weekend. The track has continued to evolve and become faster as the drivers laid down rubber session after session.
“Through all of practice, it looked very tight between us, Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull. To be honest, I was a bit surprised Red Bull weren’t a bit further up at the end of Q3, but I think our race pace looked good yesterday,” Piastri said, “but nowadays the top four teams are so close in race pace that qualifying often makes a massive difference. So I’ve got confidence that our car will be quick.
“I think there’s definitely seven other cars out on the track that are certainly not any slower.”
What’s possible for Bearman and Colapinto
Bearman locked up during Q2, a mistake he criticized himself for as he qualified P11 and didn’t advance to Q3. He qualified in the same spot for the Saudi Arabian GP earlier this year when the Briton subbed in for Sainz, who was sidelined due to appendicitis. But a big difference now versus that March race is that Bearman out-qualified teammate Nico Hülkenberg by 0.223 seconds. A valiant effort, but still not enough to satiate him after the mistake, telling his engineer on the radio: “Ah, mate, I’m such an idiot!”
The incoming Haas driver told F1 TV he “really was on the limit to get into Q3. If it wasn’t for the mistake I made in the castle section, it would have been okay.”
Bearman crashed during FP3, which cost him laps and the opportunity to continue getting comfortable with Haas’s car. This is his first full F1 weekend participating in every session. “I felt really comfortable in the car yesterday in high fuel,” Bearman said of his full race distance pace. “So I have high hopes. The car was feeling strong. So fingers crossed we can have a good race.”
Bearman sits 15th in the driver standings with six points, just two behind Pierre Gasly.
Meanwhile, Colapinto was a force to be reckoned with during qualifying, occasionally rocketing up around the top six. It was a big step from his mistake that led to an FP1 crash, and he told F1 TV, “I think I performed almost in every lap.”
It’s only Colapinto’s second grand prix weekend since being named the replacement for Sargeant following the Dutch GP weekend. An early crash could’ve knocked his confidence down a notch, but the Argentine kept pushing throughout the sessions, gaining a feel of the car. Since that moment, there haven’t been glaring errors, and he outqualified Albon after an airbox fan was left on Albon’s car ahead of the final flying laps.
Colapinto has a chance to score his first F1 points this weekend.
“We were on it at the moment we needed to be, and we got into Q3, which was the big, big target, and, yeah, feeling every time better, more comfortable with the car, more comfortable with the team.”
What it means 🥹
Franco has a moment with his Mother after that tremendous qualifying performance.#F1 #AzerbaijanGP pic.twitter.com/V4f0E2tdpK
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 14, 2024
Top photo: Dan Mullan/Getty Images, Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images
