After a frustrating and stultifying opening to the new Formula One season, Ferrari finally have a moment to savour. How much it meant was clear as Charles Leclerc climbed from his car having taken pole position for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and vigorously pointed to the prancing horse logo on his chest. Pumped by an immaculate performance, he and the Scuderia will view this as the belated opening to 2023 they wanted – but what follows this weekend will more accurately define the scale of their challenge to a dominant Red Bull.
Leclerc has taken a battering in the opening three races. He suffered an engine failure in Bahrain, a 10-place grid penalty in Saudi Arabia and was unlucky to be punted out of the race on the first lap in Australia. After a week in which he has had to dismiss rumours of talks with Mercedes to join the team should Lewis Hamilton retire, and in which it was announced that Ferrari’s racing director, Laurent Mekies, is to leave to replace Franz Tost as team principal at AlphaTauri – a blow after the recent loss of technical director David Sanchez to McLaren – Leclerc delivered reason for the embattled team to finally breathe out.
Scrutiny is part of the gig at Ferrari but it carries more weight when the horse is lame, only adding to the intensity of the task at hand as Leclerc acknowledged of his pole. “It’s good, it feels good, the whole team needed it,” he said. “It’s part our job to deal with rumours and pressure, and sometimes it is difficult to perform under those circumstances, but we did really well.”
Ending Red Bull’s hegemony over pole position this season was reason for Leclerc to feel he had made his mark on the streets of Baku, but the Monégasque driver knows only too well that the business end of the weekend remains ahead. He has now taken pole in Azerbaijan three years in a row, but on the last two occasions was unable to convert them to victory.
A hoodoo to vanquish then but it will not be easy. Red Bull’s championship leader Max Verstappen will have his part to play and he remained optimistic about his car’s formidable race pace after being beaten into second, with the Dutchman’s teammate Sergio Pérez in third.
Before Sunday, however, Leclerc and the rest will have to reset entirely for another full day of competition as F1 adopts its new sprint race format in Azerbaijan. Having revised the unsatisfactory previous structure, Saturday will now host what is being called the sprint shootout qualifying, a truncated version of the traditional arrangement, which will decide the grid for the sprint race that will follow.
The sprint will be over 100km with points from eight to one for the top eight, while both events will be standalone and have no bearing on Sunday’s grand prix, with the sport hoping the new structure will address the shortcomings of the previous format to encourage drivers to race harder.
There is no reason Leclerc should not repeat his feat on Saturday morning but the margins will be tight once more. They could not have been closer as the sun began to sink low in the sky in Baku on Friday. Verstappen had set the benchmark with a time of 1min 40.445sec on his first hot lap, pushing hard past the walls of the demanding street circuit, but Leclerc was equally brilliant in his challenge, matching the Dutchman’s time down to the thousandth of a second.
On the final laps Leclerc went out first and immediately found an aggressive but beautifully judged line, going quicker in the opening two sectors with a brilliant lap that Verstappen could not match to claim pole with a time of 1:40.203.
Behind them Mercedes were reminded of the task that lies ahead. Lewis Hamilton put in a mighty effort to take fifth but remained a full second off Leclerc’s time, while his teammate George Russell went out in Q2 in 11th place. Hamilton acknowledged they were losing time on the straights but with their new design concept not expected to make a difference until Imola in May, scrapping hard for third best once more looks their likely lot in Azerbaijan.
Verstappen currently leads Pérez by 15 points in the world championship, with Fernando Alonso in third, nine points further back. Leclerc is back in 10th, 63 points off the pace.
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz qualified fourth, Alonso and Lance Stroll were sixth and ninth for Aston Martin, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri seventh and 10th for McLaren, while Yuki Tsunoda was eighth for AlphaTauri.
Esteban Ocon was 12th for Alpine, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant were 13th and 15th for Williams while Valtteri Bottas was 14th for Alfa Romeo.
The opening session was interrupted by two red flags, the first when AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries crashed out, swiftly followed by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, both hitting the barriers at turn three. De Vries will start from 20th and Gasly from 19th.
Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou was in 16th, with Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen in 17th and 18th for Haas.
