F1 qualifying results: Charles Leclerc takes Azerbaijan GP pole

Leclerc will start ahead of the Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez in Sunday’s race after the one-hour qualifying session on Friday, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.

This is the first weekend run to the latest sprint race weekend format, with another qualifying session tomorrow for the sprint event on Saturday in Baku.

Verstappen set the early pace at 1m41.887s, two tenths clear of Leclerc, but the session was red flagged with 10 minutes to go when Nyck de Vries crashed his AlphaTauri at Turn 3.

Barely three minutes into the restart, Pierre Gasly shunted his Alpine at the same corner, putting him out of the session too. Meantime, Carlos Sainz spun his Ferrari at Turn 1 and continued.

At the second resumption, Perez briefly took the top spot with 1m41.756s, before Verstappen wrested it back with 1m41.398s. Right at the end of the session, Leclerc grabbed P1 with 1m41.269s, 0.129s faster than Verstappen.

Falling at the first hurdle were Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo, who suffered an early spin at Turn 1), the Haases of Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen (who had an issue with his car and was told to pit) and shunters Gasly and de Vries.

Perez set the initial pace at 1m41.131s, 0.062s quicker than Verstappen with Leclerc 0.085s adrift in third. Leclerc then took a second push lap and beat them all by a tenth on 1m41.037s.

The Red Bulls pitted and ran again: Verstappen retook P1 with 1m40.822s, 0.215s faster than Leclerc.

Knocked out at this point were George Russell (Mercedes), Esteban Ocon (Alpine), Alex Albon (Williams), Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) and Logan Sargeant (Williams).

On the first runs, Verstappen set the benchmark at 1m40.445s, which Leclerc matched to the thousandth of a second, but placed second as he set the time just a few seconds later.

On the final runs, Leclerc grabbed pole with a lap of 1m40.203s, 0.188s ahead of Verstappen, who could only manage 1m40.391s.

Almost three tenths off the pace, Perez will start third, ahead of Sainz, Hamilton, Alonso, Lando Norris (McLaren), Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri), Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) and Oscar Piastri (McLaren), the latter setting exactly the same laptime as Stroll.

With the new format being run for the first time, teams wanted as much running as possible in this sole one-hour practice session.

But this was hampered by Gasly’s Alpine springing a hydraulic leak that caught fire, which caused a red flag. Magnussen also went off at Turn 1, following a loss of fuel pressure.

Verstappen topped the session by 0.037s from Leclerc. Perez was a tenth off the pace in third, ahead of Sainz, Norris and de Vries.

Mercedes suffered brake issues and were only 11th and 17th with Hamilton and Russell respectively.