Source:REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
[Saba Sports News] During F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made it into Q3 but crashed into the barriers on his first lap of the final session at turn 15, ending his record of four consecutive pole positions in Baku. Ironically, he stated that the balance of his SF-25 car became increasingly difficult for him to handle on the medium tires. After the session, Leclerc said: “I felt Lewis [Hamilton] was much faster than me from the beginning, and he’s been more consistent than me throughout the weekend. I was just struggling so much. Normally when I come to Baku, everything comes quite naturally and it’s quite easy, but this year, unfortunately, it wasn’t. I felt like I understood why, so I changed a lot of things on the car in qualifying, changed the feeling with the car, and it was getting better and better until we put the medium [tire] on, and then it completely changed. With the medium, it became extremely, extremely difficult. For some reason, yesterday the medium felt better in our car, but today we could never seem to get the tire in the right window, and it made things very tricky for us.” Aside from pole-sitter Max Verstappen, the top half of the grid for Sunday’s race has an unusual order, as the championship-leading McLaren team had their own issues, resulting in their cars qualifying only 7th and 9th.