It took almost two hours to decide the grid for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, thanks to the six red flags that contributed to a stop-start qualifying. While the Baku City Circuit is known for its ravenous walls, the greater quantity of spills largely demonstrated the difficulty of the conditions.
Those six red flags produced a new qualifying record, beating the five seen in last year’s qualifying in Sao Paulo and 2022’s Imola round.
Baku is known as the City of Winds, but the changing direction of gusts around the circuit proved to be unsettling. As Lando Norris explained, it was “quite incredible. I wish everyone could understand how difficult it was with the wind, because I would say half the crashes you saw today were probably because of wind”.
Others were, of course, driver error – the closeness of the walls mean that once you’re committed to a corner, that’s it. There’s no safety net of run-off unless a driver aborts their turn-in really early. Let’s recap…
Albon’s car is craned away after his Turn 1 wall-clip
Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images
This was the first appearance of the red flag on Saturday: Albon was gearing up for a lap in Q1 and, immediately after getting the ball rolling, he put the steering in for Turn 1 a fraction too soon and proceeded to clip the inside wall with his front left. The steering arm immediately broke, and he managed to corral his Williams to the side of the road at the pit exit line.
Albon says that he had anticipated less grip and had attempted to compensate for it with a fractionally early turn-in, and thus was surprised when the circuit was much more rubbered in than expected.
“It’s my fault, no excuses really, just a bit amateurish,” Albon remarked. “I think I was first out on track, so when I went into Turn 1 on the first lap, it was really green. And then I came around the second time and the grip difference was huge and I was expecting the front to slide a little bit. It normally slides a bit and you kind of slide past the wall. You almost time it that you get a bit of understeer as you get close to the wall.
“But it didn’t understeer, so it’s clumsy and frustrating. But yeah, we had a quick car. I think I’ve been top eight pretty much every session and I’ve been feeling good with the car all weekend, so it’s annoying to go out in what should be a Q3 car.”
Twisted snout: Hulkenberg recovers to the pits with his front wing missing
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Oscar Piastri had been left without a time to his name during Q1, but managed to effectively book his place in Q2 just two seconds before the second red flag; Nico Hulkenberg had locked up at Turn 4 and stuck his nose into the Tecpro barrier.
Since the German went straight on at a relatively low speed, he could reverse and trundle back to the pits sans front wing, but the red flag was perhaps hastily waved for the incident.
Hulkenberg was eliminated in 17th, despite going out again with a new nose to improve on his final run.
“I struggled with front locking a lot more than any other session,” the Sauber driver explained. “And that really kind of made all the difference. I think not one lap without any front locking somewhere and it’s pretty costly around here. So, yeah, pretty annoying and frustrating.”
Colapinto touches the wall in Q1 with his right – later, he more dramatically clips the wall with his left
Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images
There was already a yellow flag down at Turn 4, when Pierre Gasly got caught out by a gust of wind and escaped to the run-off. While the Frenchman was attempting to extricate himself from the run-off, his Alpine team-mate Franco Colapinto came barrelling through to set himself up for the right-hander.
Alonso had just dumped Colapinto into the bottom five, and the Argentine’s chances had the second nail affixed to their coffin as he clouted the wall at Turn 4 just as the chequered flag had been produced. Colapinto lost the front end through Turn 4, washed wide, and clouted the Tecpro barrier with his rear. It then bounced the front end into the wall to double the damage.
It was a near carbon copy of Colapinto’s FP1 shunt in Baku last year, where he seemed to just carry too much speed into the corner and lost control on the brakes. That said, Norris pointed to Turn 4 as being one of the worse corners for gusts: “A lot of people locked up. It feels like one of the worst corners I’ve ever driven in my life. Just because the tailwind is, I don’t know, 50km/h or something. And it might be that on the next lap it’s 10, and you feel you can go a bit quicker. You go quicker the next lap, and you’re in the wall. It’s very difficult.”
Incident 4: Ollie Bearman
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images
Although Oliver Bearman stated that wind was a factor in his shunt on the exit of Turn 2, he was ready to accept the blame for his incident – Q2’s sole red flag after a bumper harvest of three in Q1.
Bearman took Turn 2 as normal, and swept to the apex before taking the line close to the wall. The rear end stepped out and, although the glancing blow to his rear-right wheel was quite small, it was enough to knock the trackrod out of service and left the Briton crabbing along the run to Turn 3 before electing to stop.
“We’ve been fast all weekend and then I did a silly mistake in qualifying,” Bearman rued post-session. “It was just super windy out there and I just got caught out by it.”
Leclerc escapes the scene of the crime at Turn 15
Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images
With four consecutive poles around the Baku circuit, Leclerc was hoping to make it five on the bounce. Ferrari’s pace had looked good in the early stages of qualifying but, while Hamilton was caught out in Q2 and was eliminated despite expecting to contend for pole, Leclerc was left as the sole horse in the race by Q3.
The wind was augmented by a light, barely perceptible rain shower, but it was enough to make the track surface feel slightly greasy. Leclerc was heading around Baku’s old town and just about to join the coastal Neftchilar Avenue straight, but locked up at Turn 15 and dumped his Ferrari into the Tecpro barrier.
Under braking, the left front on Leclerc’s Ferrari was noticeably under-rotating and not offering the stopping power needed to get through the left-hander unscathed. His hopes of a fifth pole in Azerbaijan had evaporated.
Leclerc didn’t feel that the difficult conditions were the reason for his shunt, but rather Ferrari’s decision to open Q3 on the mediums. “Q1 and all the laps on the soft felt much better. Then we went on the medium, which we had kept because we thought it was the best tyre, and today with these temperatures it was just impossible for me to switch them on.
“And difficult conditions or not, I don’t think that this is the reason – I think we were just lacking a lot of pace on the medium. I was probably seven or eight tenths off before the mistake and I was pushing like crazy.”
Incident 6: Oscar Piastri
Piastri made a rare mistake in the final stages of Q3
Photo by: Mark Thompson – Getty Images
Piastri doesn’t make many high-profile mistakes, but the Australian came a cropper at Turn 3 with just under four minutes left on the clock. While opening a flying lap on soft tyres, Piastri missed the apex for the third 90-degree left-hander and his McLaren escaped from the racing line to form a symbiotic relationship with the opposite barrier.
“I think tried a bit too hard in Turn 3,” Piastri said. “I haven’t actually looked at what I did differently, because I didn’t feel like I did that much differently. But, you know, a tiny bit can make a massive difference.”
Neither Norris nor Verstappen were able to get their flying laps in, which left provisional poleman Carlos Sainz on top through the remaining red flag – but the Spaniard was eventually deposed by Verstappen at the close of the session.
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