Celebrating Reuters / Hamad I Mohammed / Pool after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc takes pole position
Baku: Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made a dazzling lap in qualifying on Saturday and took pole position at the F1 Grand Prix in Azerbaijan.
Monaco lit the timing screen with a lap of 1’41.359 seconds and defeated Red Bull’s Sergio Perez in 0.282 seconds.
Championship rival Max Verstappen was 9 points behind Leclerc in overall standings, 0.347 seconds behind in 3rd place and other Ferrari Carlos Sainz in 4th place.
Leclerc’s performance on Saturday has won his sixth pole in eight races so far this season and four consecutive poles.
Last year’s Azerbaijan race also started head-on, making the 24-year-old driver the first repeat pole driver on a Baku street track. If he transforms it on Sunday, it will make him the first multiple winners of the race.
“This was something I didn’t expect and I thought Red Bull was stronger,” said Leclerc, who currently has 15 career poles.
“Everything came together on the last lap.”
Verstappen and Perez were replaced at the top of the timesheet in the first two phases of qualifying.
However, Perez reported an engine problem and a frustrated sigh on the team’s radio, a Dutch teammate said his car wasn’t fast enough to compete with Ferrari’s rivals. (Report by Abhishek Takle in Baku and Alan Baldwin in London, edited by Kevin Liffey and Clare Fallon)
