Carlos Sainz will start Sunday’s F1 Azerbaijan GP from the front row, after delivering his best qualifying performance in Williams colours. The Spaniard put in a calm and measured display during one of the most chaotic sessions of the season, finishing second behind Max Verstappen.
A session full of drama
Qualifying in Baku was far from straightforward. Q1 alone saw three red flag interruptions, with Alex Albon, Nico Hülkenberg and Franco Colapinto all finding the barriers. Despite the stoppages, Sainz stayed composed, progressing comfortably through to Q2.
In the second segment, he ran consistently inside the top 10, despite admitting he had been struggling with the brakes all weekend. When Q3 arrived, rain began to fall and the red flags came again — first for Charles Leclerc at Turn 15, and then for Oscar Piastri at Turn 3.
That left very little time for drivers to get their laps in, but Sainz rose to the challenge. He was the first to set a representative time, a 1:41.595 on mediums, and for several minutes sat on provisional pole. Eventually Verstappen struck with a stunning 1:41.117, but Sainz’s lap was still enough to secure P2.
“Well, thank you everyone for the cheers. Yeah. Very happy. Honestly, we nailed the qualifying today. Every time being on the right tyre at the right time and putting together some very strong laps,” said Sainz after the F1 Azerbaijan GP qualifying session. “Obviously, the moment that a top car was going to put that lap together, we were always going to be those four or five tenths behind like we always are, but it was only one of them, which was Max — not surprised. And for the rest, we managed to beat them. And, yeah, we were in P2, which is great news.”
“The speed is there”
For Sainz, the result reinforced his view that qualifying has been one of his strongest points this year, even if race results have not always followed.
“Well, I’ve been putting good laps together this year in qualifying. It hasn’t been my weakness or my issues at all. Again, today, we proved that the speed in this car and this team is there. I’m delivering in qualifying when it counts, and unfortunately, the year in terms of races and points is not going the way we want. But as long as the speed is there — which, again, today proves — the points and the good races will come, and I’m not worried.”
Asked whether he was frustrated to miss out on pole, Sainz remained philosophical. “No, not really, because I knew my lap was good, but probably not good enough for pole,” he admitted. “I mean, we know that if a McLaren or a Red Bull puts a lap together, that’s three to five tenths on average. And also if the track conditions were good enough — which was the big unknown — I knew my lap was not going to be good enough.”
“I think our simulation said at the time maybe only Max and Lando could beat us. So I was thinking about a P3. In the end, it was only Max… It had to be Max! But, in general, I thought as soon as I started my lap at the end, I was actually coming very quick. I was like three or four tenths up on my lap. And in one way, I was thinking, great, because this might even confirm or achieve pole, but then I was thinking the leaders are going to be even quicker, no? And that’s exactly what happened.”
Looking ahead to Sunday
Sainz made clear that his aim for Sunday was simple. “Plan for tomorrow? Try to stick it on the podium. I think I’m going to give it my best to give Williams a first podium. If it’s possible, great. And if it’s not, we will see,” he said.
He also revealed how tricky the session had been to manage, with wind and repeated stoppages breaking up his rhythm.
“The tricky thing about today was, first of all, it’s very difficult to get into a rhythm because you’re not doing laps, not finishing laps, not spending time on track. Every time you have a 10-minute break in the garage, it’s always difficult to know where the track is when you go back out again, where the tyres are going to be, where the wind is going to be. So every time we’re going out again, it’s a bit of an adventure.
“If you also think that F1 cars nowadays are a lot trickier to drive in the wind than in the wet, for example — it’s completely unpredictable. You need to think that a car in mid-corner depends purely on its downforce, and 30 or 40 kilometres per hour of wind changes the downforce dramatically.
“And that’s what we’re getting — every lap, a different level of downforce in the corner, and it always catches people out. It caught a lot of people out today — probably the wind — and it just shows. I don’t think people at home understand how tough the conditions were today and how easy it was to crash. I mean, to have the 20 best drivers in the world and seven or eight of them crashing tells you how tricky the session was today.”
