Charles Leclerc takes impressive pole for Ferrari at Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Charles Leclerc claimed pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, threading the needle on the streets of Baku for F1’s first sprint race weekend of the season. The Ferrari driver beat the Red Bull of Max Verstappen into second place, the first time Red Bull have been denied the top spot this season. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez was in third and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz fourth. Mercedes had a mixed qualifying with Lewis Hamilton taking a solid fifth but George Russell going out in Q2 in 11th place.

With the street circuit rubbering in and improving lap times as the sun began to sink low in the sky the final runs were vital. Verstappen set the benchmark with a time of 1min 40.445sec on his first hot lap, pushing hard to just breathe past the walls of the demanding street circuit. Leclerc was equally brilliant in his challenge however, exactly matching the Dutchman’s time down to the thousandth of a second and was placed second only because Verstappen had set his time first.

On the final laps Leclerc went out first and immediately found an aggressive but beautifully judged line on a track with no margin for error. He went quicker in the opening two sectors with a brilliant lap that Verstappen could not match to claim pole with a time of 1min 40.203s. It was almost two-tenths up on the Dutchman, a huge achievement given the strength of the Red Bull.

Leclerc’s first pole of the season is the 19th of his career and his third in a row in Baku but he has yet to convert one of them into a win in Azerbaijan. After a trying start to the season, this is the turnaround he and Ferrari required. He suffered an engine failure at the opening round in Bahrain, had a 10-place grid penalty at the next meeting in Saudi Arabia and was