Charles Leclerc backed his \u2018natural\u2019 strength on city tracks as he aims for a record-extending fifth consecutive pole position at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Throughout the recent era of dominance from Red Bull<\/a>, the Baku City Circuit has been a happy hunting ground for Leclerc<\/a>, with the Ferrari<\/a> driver setting the fastest time in Qualifying in Azerbaijan<\/a> in each of Max Verstappen\u2019s<\/a> title-winning campaigns from 2021-2024.<\/p>\n In contrast, no other driver has more than one pole to their name, with Valtteri Bottas<\/a>, Sebastian Vettel<\/a>, Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, and Nico Rosberg<\/a> sharing the remaining honours.<\/p>\n \u201cIt comes naturally,\u201d said Leclerc of his Qualifying success. \u201cI feel I am quite strong normally on city tracks and here, maybe there is something else as well that makes it particularly strong for me. It\u2019s a good feeling to come back here. I know normally that I am strong here.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, it doesn\u2019t change my mindset coming into the weekend. It is always the same preparation and I try not to look too much at the past, but it is definitely a track that I enjoy driving.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cOver one lap, with the new tyres, sometimes it can hide a little bit the weaknesses of a car. But on the long run, when degradation kicks in, that is really where it is difficult to hide the weaknesses.\u201d<\/p>\n While Leclerc\u2019s Saturday performances have been eye-catching, none of these pole positions have been converted into race wins, although he finished on the podium in each of the past two seasons.<\/p>\n Conceding a repeat of his recent Qualifying prowess may be difficult to repeat, he said: \u201cMcLaren<\/a> will be the team to beat. Red Bull<\/a> in Monza were very impressive with Max, I think they probably found something and brought new things with the car that made them do a big step forward, so I think they will also be up there with McLaren.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we will be behind them, but it is a track that I particularly like and in which I have been performing particularly well in Qualifying over one lap. In the race, it is a bit more difficult to hide the true performance of the car, but we will do our best and see what is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the garage, Hamilton is keen to experience a Ferrari on the Baku streets for the first time, believing that the car has more mechanical grip to offer than his previous Mercedes cars.<\/p>\n \u201cA win is a bit far-fetched [in the remaining races] given I\u2019ve been sixth, seventh and eighth most of the season,\u201d Hamilton reflected. \u201cI would love to get a podium for the team at some stage. Charles has had four or five of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel optimistic coming into the weekend. I feel like I\u2019ve found a couple of things, and now I need to work on extracting them. So I really hope that this weekend can be the start of that… I think [the Ferrari\u2019s] got more mechanical grip, and it\u2019s a lot softer than the cars that I\u2019ve driven here before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc backed his \u2018natural\u2019 strength on city tracks as he aims for a record-extending fifth consecutive pole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-145631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}