Leclerc Baku Sprint Pole – Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc claimed the Baku Sprint pole despite suffering a front-on crash in the Sprint Shootout and ahead of Red Bull duo Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen who were second and third respectively.
In SQ3, Leclerc was down on Perez in sector one, but made up for it in the final two sectors to take provisional pole with a 1:41.697 and was 0.179 seconds quicker than the Mexican with reigning world champion Verstappen a further 0.443 seconds in third.
In the final flyers, Leclerc hit the wall front on at turn five after losing the rear of his SF-23 racer, whilst Perez and Verstappen did not improve, and both remained in second and third for the Sprint respectively.
The other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz will start the Sprint in fourth and was unable to set his final hot-lap due to his pole setting team-mate’s shunt.
Mercedes pairing Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell followed in fifth and sixth places respectively and in-front of Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who took seventh.
Aston Martin duo Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso’s DRS issues continued to cause trouble as both qualified in eighth and ninth respectively and McLaren’s Lando Norris rounded out the top ten and was unable to post a lap-time due to running out of a set of soft tyres to use for the session.
In the second segment, which was topped by Verstappen, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finished SQ2 outside the top 10 in 11th place and in-front of Haas F1 Team’s Nico Hulkenberg who was 12th and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon who took 12th.
The other Haas VF-23 of Kevin Magnussen placed 14th and ahead of Williams Racing’s Logan Sargeant who was unable to take part in SQ2 following his heavy shunt in SQ1, which brought out the red flags.
In the first shootout stage, which was topped by Leclerc, the session ended prematurely after a red flag came courtesy of the aforementioned Sargeant who clattered the turn 15 wall and done a lot of damage to the rear of his FW45 racer.
Alfa Romeo pairing Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas qualified for the F1 Sprint in 16th and 17th followed by AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda was 18th and just missed out on setting a time due to the red flag by Sargeant.
BWT Alpine F1 Team’s Pierre Gasly’s woes in Baku continued as a suspected exhaust leak meant the Frenchman’s run was compromised in SQ1 and wound up a low-19th as the second AlphaTauri AT04 of Nyck de Vries brought up the rear.
2023 Azerbaijan GP Sprint Shootout – The Pole Sitter
2023 Azerbaijan GP Sprint Shootout Pole Position – Charles Leclerc, #16, Scuderia Ferrari, SF-23, 1:41.697:
“We need to be realistic – until now, we’ve been on the backfoot in the race but hopefully we have a good surprise.”
You can see the full Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2023 Sprint Shootout Results Classification at the link: https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2023/races/1207/azerbaijan/sprint-shootout.html
#AzerbaijanGP Qualifying: @CharlesLeclerc beats @Max33Verstappen to pole. #F1 #BakuGP
#AzerbaijanGP FP1: @Max33Verstappen pips @CharlesLeclerc to top time-sheets. #F1 #BakuGP
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