Max Verstappen made it back-to-back pole positions at the end of a staggering qualifying session that lasted just shy of two hours ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
It was Verstappen’s sixth in his Red Bull this year, and first around the Baku Street Circuit where there were six red flag sessions due to incidents galore.<\/p>\n
Verstappen starts ahead of Williams’ Carlos Sainz and Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson, with Lando Norris in his McLaren only seventh.<\/p>\n
Oscar Piastri brought out the record-breaking sixth red flag for an F1 qualifying session by crashing with less than four minutes remaining in Q3. It was the championship leader’s first error since sliding off track in the wet in his home race in Australia at the start of the year. He starts ninth.<\/p>\n
It proved to be a disastrous day for Ferrari.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc crashed in Q3, bringing out the fifth red flag. After four successive poles at this track, he will start 10th.<\/p>\n
Team-mate Lewis Hamilton, quickest in practice on Friday, was unable to replicate that pace in qualifying. He finished Q2 three-tenths slower than his lap in Q1, which was six-tenths down on his leading FP2 lap. The seven-time F1 champion starts 12th.<\/p>\n
In Q1, there was frustration for Williams, with Alex Albon, who had been in the top 10 in each of the three practice sessions, hitting a barrier on the inside of Turn 1, breaking the front suspension, leaving him to start 20th.<\/p>\n
There were three red flags overall in Q1, with the last of those for a major smash involving Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, careering into a barrier at Turn 4, further jeopardising his hopes of retaining his seat for next season.<\/p>\n
The fourth red flag early in Q2 was sparked by Oliver Bearman clipping a wall, breaking the right-rear suspension on his Haas, and stopping on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen made it back-to-back pole positions at the end of a staggering qualifying session that lasted just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[827,830,828,831,829,826,813,43,823,825,824,44,822,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-156806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-headlines","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-news","tag-racing","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}