VIDEO: Hard hit into the barrier! Logan Sargeant victim of turn 15, sprint qualifying shootout for Leclerc

Formula 1 has its fourth race of the season this weekend, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The teams and drivers have completed Saturday’s sprint qualifying, which, like Friday’s qualifying, was dominated by Charles Leclerc. However, the fans saw red flags again when Logan Sargeant crashed in turn 15.

A short sprint qualifying shootout got underway on Saturday morning, specifically at 10:30 our time.

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

For those who are just starting to follow the F1 race weekend from Saturday, let’s revisit the changes we are witnessing on the occasion of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The race weekend at the Baku circuit kicked off with the first free practice session at 11:30am on Friday. At 15::00, the programme then resumed with Friday’s qualifying, which however now determines the starting grid order for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

According to the original plan, the second free practice was scheduled to take place on Saturday at 11:30 a.m., but based on the above changes, it was cancelled and replaced by the Sprint Shootout, which determines the starting order for the later sprint.

The race will be run as usual on Sunday and is scheduled to start at 13:00. This qualifying shootout has almost the same rules as the classic qualifying, except for a few minor changes in terms of time and tyre usage.

The first qualifying segment (Q1) lasts 12 minutes and drivers will be required to apply a medium set of tyres. They will also use the same compound in the 10-minute middle segment of qualifying (Q2), with only the soft compound available for the final eight minutes (Q3). The sprint itself and its rules are unchanged.

Sprint Shootout

Similar to Friday’s first part of qualifying, the Sprint Shootout produced one big crash into the tech-pro barrier in Turn 15, suffered by Williams driver Logan Sargeant. As a result, race directors logically resorted to red flags and the suspension of qualifying.

After the restart, the drivers were finally able to focus on capturing the best possible time. And that was Charles Leclerc with a time of 1:42.820.

Sixteenth-placed Zhou Kuan-yu, seventeenth-placed Valtteri Bottas, eighteenth-placed Júki Cunoda, nineteenth-placed Pierre Gasly and twentieth-placed Nyck de Vries failed to advance from the opening twelve-minute qualifying segment.

SQ2 – second part of the Sprint Shootout

The drivers usually use the soft or red fastest tyre compound for the classic qualifying. However, within the rules, as we wrote above, they had to apply the yellow, or medium, compound.

And of course it takes longer to warm up to the ideal temperature window, so we had to wait a while to capture the fast laps. Anyway, apart from Carlos Sainz’s problems, the second part of qualifying didn’t bring any significant drama.

Eleventh Oscar Piastri, twelfth Nico Hülkenberg, thirteenth Esteban Ocon, fourteenth Kevin Magnussen failed to qualify for Q3 and due to no time taken due to the accident in Q1, Sargeant will start the sprint as fifteenth.

SQ3 – fight for pole position

Even in the last part of the sprint qualifying session, the drivers struggled to warm up their tyres. This was due to standing for too long. In any case, it was in SQ3 that the drivers had a battle to see who would start Saturday’s sprint from first place.

The fastest time was set after just a few minutes by Monaco’s Leclerc, whose time of 1:41.697 was enough to take pole position. Although he collided with the barrier at the end of SQ3, it did not change his result.

The second and third positions at the start of the sprint would belong to the two Red Bulls. In this case, Sergio Pérez beat teammate Max Verstappen. Fourth place went to George Russell, who beat Sainz.

Sixth was Lewis Hamilton, with Alex Albon in the Williams taking a fantastic seventh place. The eighth starting slot will belong to Fernando Alonso at the start of the sprint, ahead of teammate Lance Stroll. Rounding out the elite ten is Lando Norris in the McLaren. Saturday’s sprint will start at 15:30

Sources