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Ferrari's Charles Leclerc stormed to pole position for the 2022 Azerbaijan GP, beating the Red Bulls of second-placed Sergio Perez and third-placed Max Verstappen by three-tenths of a second to take his fourth consecutive pole and his sixth of the season so far.
The Ferrari driver made a small mistake on his opening run of the final Q3 top-10 shootout at the Baku City Circuit to lie second ahead of the final runs, but on his last lap the Monegasque put in a superlative display to eclipse his first lap by almost half and to claim pole with a 0.282 margin to Perez who beat team-mate Verstappen by five-hundredths of a second. Ferrari's Carlos Sainz, quickest after the first run of Q3, brushed the walls of the street circuit on his final run and had to settle for fourth place on the grid. "It feels good, this one. Obviously, all pole positions, feels good, but this one I probably did not expect it, because I thought Red Bull were stronger, especially in Q1 and Q2, I really struggled to see that we were faster, but then in the last lap, everything came together and I managed to do a good lap, so extremely happy... I'm really excited for tomorrow," Charles Leclerc, Ferrari said after qualification on Saturday. George Russell rounded out the top five for Mercedes, Pierre Gasly sharing the third row with him with a solid showing for AlphaTauri. Unhappy throughout qualifying, Lewis Hamilton took seventh and will share row four with AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda. Sebastian Vettel took P9 for Aston Martin with Alpine's Fernando Alonso rounding out the top 10. Q2 saw both McLarens and both Alfa Romeos eliminated: Lando Norris 11th and Daniel Ricciardo 12th; Zhou Guanyu 14th and Valtteri Bottas 15th. Between those orange and red pairs was the blue Alpine driver, Esteban Ocon. Haas's Kevin Magnussen was left in Q1, taking a provisional P16 on the grid, Williams drivers Alex Albon 17th and Nicholas Latifi 18th. Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll crashed out of Q1 and will start a provisional P19 on the grid ahead of Haas's Mick Schumacher, 20th. (ANI)
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