Baku Qualifying Report

With Mercedes clearly on the backfoot, the front of the grid was up for grabs.  Things are heating up in the contest for the championship, at least in the media room.  Wolff was moved to say that: "Christian is a bit of windbag who wants to be on TV".

A scant 13 minutes into Q1, Stroll visited the corner and took the right front corner of his car to the cleaners and the session was stopped.  The debris was cleared up, the car was removed and the barrier checked.  Everyone came back out and four minutes later, Giovinazzi smashed his car up and bought out the red flag.

It now felt like a waiting game to see who would be next.  In to Q2 we went, the cars at the front were unbelievably close with 5 cars all setting the same time exactly.  Then with a minute and half to go, Ricciardo put his papaya machine into the barrier and the session was closed.  The winners from this were Alonso, who was right on the cusp and Tsunoda, who finished the session 4th and through to his first ever Q3.  He needed this boost as team mate Gasly was first in FP3.  The losers were Russell, who didn't get a chance to show what he could do with his newly-fixed Williams, it needed a new engine unit after a failure in FP3 and the world champions Vettel and Raikkonen.

These crashes, when viewed from the sofa, all seem particularly avoidable, just turn the wheel when you go into the corner.  The car-lifting truck got a lot of track time this week.

Getting a slip stream from a car in front proved to be very important.  On the first run, we saw Bottas get 8th spot, with Hamilton, who was directly behind him on track, getting 2nd.   With all the chat focused on Mercedes and Red Bull, well Hamilton and Verstappen, Gasly and LeClerc were the big names in Q3. We saw fun and games heading round the track for the second run, I didn't know F1 cars could travel so slow.  With LeClerc in pole position, could he manufacture a wee incident somewhere round the track.  I predicted Sainz would do it for him and he did, with some help from Tsunoda.  Only the four red flags during Qualifying.  LeClerc looked like he couldn't quite believe what had happened.  In interview he said: "I thought it was quite a s**t lap".  Don't write off the power of a good first run.

Still Azerbaijan looks absolutely beautiful and the coverage really sells it as a holiday destination, if I can remember what a holiday is.