Leclerc Makes It Back-To-Back Poles In Baku

Calum Gill 14:44 05/06/2021

Charles Leclerc has taken pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, his second consecutive pole for the Ferrari team.

The Monegasque used the incredibly powerful tow on the main straight from Lewis Hamilton to set his quickest time, 0.232 seconds quicker than Hamilton, who starts P2. Max Verstappen was frustrated as he could only manage 3rd fastest, on a weekend where it looked like Red Bull were significantly quicker than Mercedes.

Pierre Gasly produced a stellar effort to put his AlphaTauri on the second row of the grid alongside Verstappen, while Ferrari's Carlos Sainz, who crashed at the end of Q3, was 5th. Lando Norris' McLaren will drop to 9th on the grid, following red flag infringements in Q1, where he appeared to drive past the pit entry after the red flag dropped. 

Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull could only manage 7th (which will become 6th), despite looking quick in all three practice sessions, while Yuki Tsunoda in the sister AlphaTauri put in his best ever qualifying in 8th (which will now be 7th), in spite of him also crashing at the end of Q3. Alpine's Fernando Alonso and Valtteri Bottas in his Mercedes rounded out the top 10.

-Full weekend results

4 red flags in hectic session

There were four red flags across qualifying, two in Q1 and 1 in each of the other sessions. The first came for Lance Stroll taking off the right front wheel of his Aston Martin at turn 15 early on, before Alfa-Romeo's Antonio Giovinazzi put his car in the wall at the same corner a few minutes after the restart. Daniel Ricciardo put his McLaren in the wall at the end of Q2 at turn 3, and then Tsunoda did the exact same at the end of Q3. Upon approaching the crashed AlphaTauri, Sainz locked up and spun into the escape road, taking off his front wing, and bringing the session to an immediate end.

Further down the field

Aston Martin's Sebastian Vettel narrowly missed out on Q3 due to the red flag caused by Ricciardo, as did Esteban Ocon in his Alpine and Ricciardo. Kimi Raikkonen in his Alfa-Romeo was 14th, ahead of George Russell in his Williams, the Briton in fifteenth. Russell's teammate Nicholas Latifi was 16th, ahead of the two Haas cars, with Mick Schumacher outqualifying Nikita Mazepin. Giovinazzi and Stroll did not set a lap, and will therefore make up the back row of the grid.

2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Qualifying Classification