Crashes, red flags and a dramatic battle for pole position! Who won qualifying for Sunday’s VC of Azerbaijan?

Formula 1 has its fourth race of the season this weekend, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. And as the Baku circuit will host the first sprint race of the season, all the participants took part in qualifying on Friday. And it brought many things indeed – a tough battle for pole position, accidents and the associated red flags.

Qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix got underway on Friday afternoon, specifically at 15:00 our time.

It should be noted that this, the fourth race of the season, also includes Saturday’s sprint, and Formula 1 has tailored its programme accordingly. Indeed, the queen of motorsport recently confirmed a change to the format of the sprint race weekend.

So let’s take a look back at what’s in store for us this weekend at the Baku circuit. The race weekend at the Baku circuit kicked off with the first free practice session at 11:30am on Friday.

And at the aforementioned 15::00 the programme of the race weekend in Baku continued with Friday’s qualifying, which, however, now determines the starting grid order for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

There will be no second free practice on Saturday, instead everyone will take the qualifying session, which will determine the starting order for the subsequent sprint. The race will be run as usual on Sunday, with the start scheduled for 13:00.

Dramatic first part of the qualifying

So, as far as Friday’s qualifying is concerned, its first segment brought a lot. After just a few minutes, Nyck de Vries failed to make it through the third corner and crashed into the tech-pro barrier, ending his qualifying run prematurely.

The race directors resorted to red flags to suspend qualifying. But the Dutch driver was not alone in crashing at Turn 3.

Pierre Gasly (Alpine) also damaged not only his car but also the barrier itself. The fans in the stands and on the TV screens saw red flags and a suspended qualifying session.

Carlos Sainz also had a wild run through Turn 3, but luckily for him he didn’t damage his Ferrari. From the first qualifying segment (Q1), sixteenth-placed Zhou Kuan-yu, seventeenth-placed Nico Hülkenberg, eighteenth-placed Kevin Magnussen, nineteenth-placed Gasly and last-placed De Vries failed to progress to Q2.

The top spot in Q1 was eventually snatched by Sainz’s teammate Charles Leclerc, who set a time of 1:41.269. He was 129 thousandths of a second behind second-placed Max Verstappen.

Q2 – second part of qualifying

Five more drivers failed to progress from the second qualifying segment to the second qualifying session. Logan Sargeant (Williams) will start from fifteenth on Sunday, with Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) ahead of him.

Sargeant’s teammate Alex Albon set a time that was only good enough for thirteenth place. The twelfth starting slot on Sunday will belong to Esteban Ocon (Alpine), and well, there will be a big disappointment for Mercedes in Baku.

George Russell did not qualify for Q3, Lewis Hamilton finished the middle segment in tenth place! The fastest time in Q2 was set by Verstappen (1::40.822).

Q3 – a great battle for pole position

So the pole position in Q3 was fought for by both Red Bull, Ferrari, Aston Martin and McLaren drivers, plus Hamilton and Juki Cunoda in the AlphaTauri. Leclerc was the winner of qualifying after a dramatic battle, beating Verstappen by 188 thousandths of a second with a time of 1:40.203.

It should be added, the times of Leclerc and Verstappen were exactly the same about halfway through Q3! In fact, they both set a time of 1:40.445 and a big battle for pole position was expected. So what will the line-up of the elite ten look like at the start of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix?

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