BAKU, Azerbaijan \u2014 Max Verstappen took pole position and championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed out in qualifying for Formula 1\u2019s Azerbaijan Grand Prix in a marathon session with constant crashes, rain and a record six red flags.<\/p>\n
Red Bull’s Verstappen was fastest by .478 from Carlos Sainz, Jr. of Williams in a session that ran an hour past its scheduled time, longer than most races. Liam Lawson of Racing Bulls starts Sunday’s race a career-best third.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just have to send it,\u201d Verstappen said of his final lap, trying to beat a time Sainz had set in much drier conditions.<\/p>\n
Piastri slammed into the barrier while chasing pole position on a track left slippery by earlier rainfall. His McLaren teammate Lando Norris was only seventh after clipping the wall on his final lap and couldn’t take full advantage of Piastri’s error.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just braked a little bit late,\u201d Piastri told broadcaster Sky Sports. \u201cDisappointing way to end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri qualified ninth ahead of Sunday’s race after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc also crashed earlier while seeking what would have been a fifth consecutive pole position in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton showed he had strong pace by going fastest in Friday\u2019s second practice session, but it was yet another disappointing qualifying session for the seven-time champion as he ended up 12th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKU, Azerbaijan \u2014 Max Verstappen took pole position and championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed out in qualifying for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-157183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}