Breaking: Azerbaijan Grand Prix: Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc On Pole

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc claimed his sixth pole position in eight 2022 grands prix in Azerbaijan. The 24-year-old Monegasque is hoping for a change in the misfortune that has prevented him winning the last two races in Spain and Monaco.

Leclerc starts in Baku nine points behind the world champion, Max Verstappen, with Ferrari 36 points behind Red Bull Racing in the constructors’ championship after four successive races wins by the British team.

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The pole position fight was once more a two-team affair, with Ferrari and Red Bull locking out the front two rows of the grid for the sixth time. But it is not Verstappen who shares the front row with Leclerc, but his teammate Sergio Pérez, the winner in Monaco, who out-qualified the Dutchman for the third time this season.

Pérez, whose win in Monte Carlo a week ago was his third race victory and saw him supplant Pedro Rodríguez as the most successful Mexican F1 driver, is something of a Baku street circuit specialist.

He has finished on the podium three times since the race joined the F1 schedule in 2016, including winning a dramatic 2021 race when Verstappen, leading, suffered a high-speed tyre blow-out.

Leclerc, too, is dynamite around the challenging 3.7 miles, and is the first man to take more than one pole position at the track. A feature of the season has been Ferrari’s superiority over a single lap but Red Bull’s advantage in race trim, with stronger straight-line speed and more benign tyre usage often allowing Verstappen to overhaul Leclerc.

Yet Leclerc, who only suffered at the hands of questionable Ferrari race strategy in Monaco, remains optimistic. “The pole lap felt really good,” he said. “I’m excited for the race. Tyre management is a big thing here and when we brought out a car upgrade in Spain we made a step forward, which we didn’t get to see in Monaco. I’m excited for the race.”

Verstappen was very much the dominant Red Bull driver en route to his first world title last year, with an average qualifying advantage of 0.4sec over Pérez. This year, however, with different rules and a changed car design concept, there has often been just hundredths of a second between the pair. Pérez, with a new two-year Red Bull contract extension, is driving with total confidence. Just six points behind Leclerc in the championship and 15 adrift of his teammate, it will be interesting to see if he is moved aside to prioritise Verstappen in the race.

Baku, with its long front straight, is one of F1’s easier tracks on which to overtake and the close proximity of walls and barriers means a race with much jeopardy and often multiple safety car interventions and restarts.

Red Bull’s team principal, Christian Horner, said: “We’ve had a good and competitive race car everywhere and I hope we can give Ferrari a hard time.”

Behind the two dominant teams, George Russell was best of the rest for Mercedes in fifth, out-qualifying seven-time world champion his teammate Lewis Hamilton for the fifth time in eight starts, with a stand-out performance by AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly splitting the two Mercedes on the Azerbaijan grid.

Stewards investigated Hamilton for driving unnecessarily slowly and delaying Lando Norris at the end of Q2, the McLaren driver missing out on the top 10, but decided against taking action.

“I’ve got mixed feelings,” Russell said of his run. “The car felt good but it’s shocking to look at the times and see we are more than 1.3sec from pole position.”

The team have still been unable to solve their bouncing, or porpoising problem that is giving both drivers an uncomfortable ride when the car is set up at its lowest height to optimise all-important aerodynamic downforce around what is an inherently bumpy track.

Russell said: “I’m feeling every single bump and the car is as rigid as I’ve ever felt it. It’s bouncing so much that I can barely spot the braking zones.”

Russell added of the general porpoising problem: “I think it’s just a matter of time before we see a major incident … I don’t think we can sustain this for three years or however long these regulations are in force for.”

“I’m not surprised,” Hamilton said of Russell’s comments. “It was the same in Monaco… But this is a tricky and often chaotic race where anything can happen.”

Hamilton is not wrong there, something of which Leclerc will be acutely aware. He would much prefer a simple, drama-free afternoon to get his championship challenge back on track. He is unlikely to get it.