Azebaijan Grand Prix | Leclerc takes the ‘pole’ with Sainz fourth and Alonso tenth

Leclerc, 24, signed his fifteenth ‘pole’ in F1 – the sixth of the year – by dominating qualifying this Saturday, in which he covered, in his best lap, the 6,003 meters of the track in the Azerbaijani capital in a minute, 41 seconds and 359 thousandths, 282 less than ‘Checo’, who will start second in Azerbaijan, where the Mexican won last year.

The Dutchman Max Verstappen (Red Bull), leader of the World Championship (with a nine-point advantage over Leclerc), who set the third qualifying time -347 thousandths-; and the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) -fourth, at 455- will start from the second row this Sunday in Baku; where the other Spaniard, the double Asturian world champion Fernando Alonso (Alpine), will start tenth.

Alonso, who was one second and eight tenths off Leclerc’s time, will start from the fifth row, alongside quadruple German world champion Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin), who improved it by one tenth and will start ninth.

From the third row of the grid will start the Englishman George Russell (Mercedes) -fifth in the ‘quali’- and the Frenchman Pierre Gasly (Alpha Tauri).

Behind them, from the fourth row, will start the seven-time English world champion Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and the Japanese Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha Tauri), in a race scheduled for 51 laps, to complete a 306-kilometre route that will start at three in the afternoon (one o’clock, in Spanish peninsular time: 11:00 GMT).