Chapter 434: Azerbaijan Grand Prix | Qualifying

"Max Verstappen found the wall at Turn 15 in final practice in Baku. The Dutchman was coming into the corner too hot, braking late and locking up on the front left, and there was nowhere to go but into the barriers, red-flagging the session.

Red Bull has had success here in the past, with Daniel Ricciardo winning the inaugural Azerbaijan Grand Prix in 2017.

Current number two in the championship will be hoping to emulate his former teammate on Sunday, as will Sergio Perez, both looking quick in the Baku sunshine as he finally has the opportunity to take the lead of the championship from Hamilton if he wins the race.

The most recent winner here was Valtteri Bottas, as Mercedes endured a difficult Friday, with both silver arrows out of the top 10 in second practice.

The Finn found the dusty and gusty conditions troubling at times, going off at Turn 3 as he got to grips with the tricky track surface.

Defending world champion and current championship leader Lewis Hamilton had a moment at Turn 16, the Mercedes maestro doing well to avoid a coming together with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.

The Haas drivers had the track to themselves early on. Rookies Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin took full advantage of the clear Baku streets to get some quick and clean laps in, gathering that all-important data.

The Russian brushed the wall exiting Turn 15 late on.

A few drivers made use of their full gearboxes. Nicholas Latifi and Carlos Sainz, in particular, opted for escape roads and then reversed back out onto the track.

Sebastian Vettel, ever the showman, opted for the flashier handbrake turn.

George Russell suffered a loss of power, forcing the Briton to abandon his Williams and walk back to the pits.

With 20 minutes to go, the qualifying simulation runs started and the lap times tumbled.

Pierre Gasly was quickest. The Frenchman pushed his AlphaTauri to the top spot with a fine late run on the red-ringed rubber, over three-tenths quicker than his nearest rival.

Perez was P2, and Hamilton’s final run, with a helpful tow from Checo Perez, netted the 7-time champ P3, his best result of the weekend so far, followed closely by the rookie Fatih Yıldırım in P4 before the two Ferraris, led by Leclerc, completed the top six.

Lando Norris in P7, breathing down Alonso’s neck in P8 by less than a tenth, as Ocon and Ricciardo completed the top ten.

His best result of the weekend so far. The Ferrari pairing of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were next. With the mandate..."

Rümeysa, who had finally managed to wake up after getting the opportunity to have a nap, which coincided with Fatih’s FP3 period, watched in silence to bring herself up to date on his situation, as qualifying was only a few minutes away and she didn’t want to go into it blindly.

Although they could afford nannies to look after the kids, they had opted to bring them up this early, and thanks to her mother’s availability, it made the couple, along with her mother, help one another to get enough rest while not neglecting the kids, resulting in everyone’s sleeping times becoming a "sleep when it is possible" situation. But despite that, all three of them made sure they were awake in time to watch the qualifying session.

Speak of the devil, and you will find him waiting for you. A few seconds after she was done watching the FP3 highlights, the Formula 1 intro music finally started playing as the qualifying broadcast began, and shortly after, David Croft could be heard doing his usual intro as different animations about the track started showing.

"Welcome along, everybody, from the city of winds. It’s Baku, here in the land of fire. It’s Azerbaijan and a Baku street circuit that’s a voyage of treachery around its 3.7 miles, not just for the race tomorrow, but for qualifying today.

Watch out for the barriers, watch out for the flags. A red flag or yellow flags could interrupt your program, and we have got an exciting qualifying session to come here in Baku.

With an estimated population of 3 million, it is the largest city below sea level in the world and home to the narrowest point on the F1 calendar. At the width of the circuit, here at the castle section, it’s just 7 meters.

You can barely get two cars side-by-side. Going through that part of the track is just one of the 20 corners around this 3.7-mile circuit, with 70 gear changes during the course of a lap.

It’s the busiest lap of the year in terms of gear changes, and it’s one of the fastest along the main straight as well, reaching speeds in excess of 215 miles per hour in qualifying," he paused for a moment as the animations ended and finally, the incidents that had happened on this track in its previous Grand Prix started being shown.

"Into Turn 1 here, we have a battle for fourth ending in a disaster for the Red Bull team as Ricciardo crashed into his teammate, Verstappen. Two more teammates found a little bit of trouble on this circuit in 2017 at Racing Point.

It was about Ocon tangled up with his teammate, Sergio Perez, who would retire from the race. And in qualifying in 2019, Leclerc, the favorite for pole, ended up smashing into the barrier at Turn 8, and that was the end of his qualifying session.

The tires have taken a step softer since we were last here in Baku. It’s the C5, C4, and C3, the same compound of tires that we used in Monaco. Different speeds along the straights here, but the corners are very much the same.

It’s a track of two halves: half Monza and half Monaco. Who’s gonna come out on top? Who’s on the back foot going into this session? Paul di Resta, we had a scrappy, scruffy, but very interesting FP3. So we still don’t really know the answers..."

.....

Fatih could be seen slowing to a crawl as he arrived at Turn 16, as the cars in front of him had bunched up in an attempt to open a gap for themselves before they went for their push laps. He waited for a few seconds until the car in front of him moved out of the way before waiting a few seconds himself to open his own gap before finally moving.

The moment the gap opened, he took the final corner before finally entering the super-long straight.

"He has been forced to back out longer than needed to open a gap, allowing the tires to cool down, and he is losing temperature. But he keeps his foot to the metal on the long straight, building speed through the super-long straight, and with the DRS opening, he reaches speeds within the 330 kph range.

You hope at that speed, as you reach the braking for Turn 1, they work, and for Fatih, they did, and certainly enough to avoid the barrier going into Turn 1, taking a good line. He keeps the car to the right side, taking Turn 2 and entering the second long straight, and he manages to pick up a tow, lining himself up behind Charles ahead of him.

As he heads down to Turn 3, he brakes at the 100-meter board, downshifts to second gear before turning left. As the right-hander comes up, he goes right at the barrier and exits well. A left-hander and a right-hander comes up to him, and he treats it as a chicane. As he crosses the Sector 1 line, he is already a tenth above what Charles had done, but Verstappen behind him does an even better job as he improves beyond what Fatih had done...."

.....

Jos Verstappen was watching the ongoing Q1 of qualifying with a squinted eyebrow as he watched Fatih, who was now the main focus of the broadcaster, currently in the middle of a very impressive lap.

It was the first time he started feeling like something was wrong because, for the entire week, Fatih had done better than any other rookie on the grid, but not impressively. In nearly all the free practices, he had finished behind Gasly, which had given him quite a relief as he started thinking that the Monaco situation was an outlier.

But the purple Sector 2 was telling him a completely different story. It seemed he had just taken the superficial information and didn’t look further into why Fatih’s pace was slow, because if he had, he would have discovered that Fatih had used the bare minimum number of tires, meaning by the time track evolution had fully crept in and drivers with brand-new tires were on qualifying runs, he was participating in them on slightly used tires. Despite that, he had still managed to finish FP3 in P4.

As Fatih finally entered the final straight, with the team managing to time it perfectly with Mercedes’ Bottas starting his push lap, Bottas ended up slipstreaming Fatih for the entire straight before his name, which was at the bottom with no time set, immediately shot him to the top, having gained half a second in the final sector alone, all from just the tow he received from Bottas, beating Charles’s time by half a second.