This time we didn’t expect it either. The signals given by Ferrari were excellent, but to think that on a track like Baku the SF21 could start from pole position is a surprise. A surprise absolutely deserved by both the team and driver.
Charles Leclerc takes home his ninth pole position with an excellent lap, in which he maximized every aspect. Perfect in the violent braking of the first sector, very fast in the central sector where it was necessary to maximize the strengths of the car and ready in the third sector to pick up Hamilton’s tow with a bit of luck that, however, you have to know how to seize on the flying lap. And this crowns the perfect work done by the team. We said yesterday that the improvement in Ferrari’s working method is perceivable as early as Friday, when the cars arrive on the track with a good base set-up and the team can dedicate itself to refine the details or try particular solutions, always with a solid base of reference.
And it was the same also in Baku, where the Maranello team optimized the set-ups in every detail as the sessions progressed and ended up taking the second pole in a row. The four main aspects worked perfectly: the aerodynamic setting ensured the perfect compromise between grip and speed, the power delivery strategies minimized the lack of horsepower (in addition to the unique mapping rule which evidently weighs even more than what can be expected), the mechanical grip in the slow section was the best of the grid and the entire aspects produced the perfect tire temperature. All perfect for Charles Leclerc then. Carlos Sainz too. He was still fast and close, but he fell behind because he still doesn’t have that last tenth in qualifying and because he didn’t find the right tow at the end of the lap.
Hamilton does one of his magic
Usually for Lewis Hamilton, second place in qualifying is equivalent to a defeat, but not today. The seven-time world champion found a key to making his W12 work, in a combination of a more exhausted set-up and a double warm-up lap that would bring the tires into the right temperature window, then maintained with his driving style during the lap, as always perfect when it comes to working on the tires. Bottas, who starts P10, more than a second behind Hamilton, did not find the key to the problem of a Mercedes that he probably has the potential for great race pace, but that is more difficult to find than you could imagine. We compared Charles Leclerc’s lap with Lewis Hamilton’s, two of the three best drivers of the day, to find, as always, similarities and differences and some interesting parameters.
In the first sector we can see how Charles is much faster in all the first 3 corners, all 3 at 90 degrees with important braking. Hamilton obviously has more power and reaches +5 km / h in the extension before corner 3. Thanks to the power of the Mercedes Power Unit in traction, the first sector ends with only 31 thousandths of an advantage for Charles Leclerc. But it is in the central sector where the performance advantage of the SF21 can be seen, with the whole area of the old city masterfully addressed by Charles, thanks to a car that confirms that it is at the moment a reference in very slow turns. Important differences, even of 7 and 8 km / h in favor of Charles Leclerc, bring from our surveys an advantage of over 2 and a half tenths between turn 7 and turn 12 for the Monegasque on Hamilton, who then, thanks again to the straights, recovers up to halve the time lost to 128 thousandths. The last sector includes the last corner and the very long final straight.
The magic of Charles is at turn 16
Charles Leclerc in the last descent makes a big difference: the Monegasque, unlike Hamilton, but also all the other drivers, anticipates the braking a lot, sacrificing a few kilometers in the straight. Thanks to this, however, he obtains a better line and consequently a better exit when entering the straight section. This gives an advantage in terms of speed -distance corner and, especially traction rectilinear beginning that Hamilton employs almost 200 meters to fill, while discharging all the Mercedes power to the ground and flying straight ahead thanks to the unloaded structure. In the final part the Briton is unable to win compared to Charles, given that the Ferrari number 16 “grabs” his wake, gaining 73 thousandths on him and bringing home a superb performance.
Bitter disappointment for Red Bull
Who most of all is defeated by this qualifying is the Red Bull. Even in qualifying, the car has shown its peculiar characteristics at times, it is enough to see that the best times of the day in the first and second sectors are precisely Verstappen’s, but the management of the session was really not at the level of a team that is fighting for the title. The teamwork between Verstappen and Perez in Q3 did not work, with the Dutchman practically without “towing” his teammate and the Mexican who, perhapsnot very focused on his lap, knowing he had to grant the slipstream, he put together a performance that was not ideal. Even Max’s lap was not irresistible, however, and from the post-qualifying reactions it is quite evident that he expected to give everything in the last attempt. With such a tight Formula 1, however, it is not allowed to have moments in which you do not give 100% , because every episode can count.
We also compared Verstappen’s lap with Charles’. We see that in general the RB16B has more balanced data than the Mercedes seen previously. The aggressiveness in the driving style however rewards Charles in the first sector thanks especially to the very tight braking of turn 3. The central sector is still to the advantage of Char;es Leclerc’s Ferrari, albeit by a few thousandths. In fact, what can be seen is that the SF21 in the strait is at least as fast as the car that was the reference in these characteristics, namely the Red Bull. In the third sector then, the setting of turn 16 and the tow on the straight they close the gap to 175 thousandths to Leclerc’s advantage only in that straight.
Finally, we turned our attention to the final straight to see what happened in more detail.
We compared Leclerc, Hamilton, Verstappen and Gasly (the third best driver of the day). You can see what happened, with Charles Leclerc the fastest to get out of turn 16 in traction thanks to the driving technique described above. After about 400 meters on the straight, it is Gasly who lags behind, as if he were lacking the thrust of his power unit. Charles Leclerc, Hamilton and Verstappen are equal up to the last 500 meters, where the Dutchman, being the only one without a tow, lacks 6-7 km / h of speed.
The peculiarity of Gasly
Regarding the strange lack of power noticed on Gasly’s Alpha Tauri, despite Tsunoda’s tow in front of him we checked the data of the complete lap and in all the previous straights the Frenchman’s car was absolutely among the most fast, so much so that Gasly showed up on the final straight with the best part time of Q3 and the tow of his teammate, foreshadowing a sensational pole position, which then vanished just as much as he noticed on the straight. An explanation that we have given ourselves, by analyzing the data, is that Alpha Tauri could have been a desired strategy: use most of the hybrid energy in the first two sectors and then rely on the planned wake between team members in the last. For Gasly this particular idea did not work fully, but the fourth starting position is still a fantastic performance.
McLaren also disappoints
Another defeat of the day, unexpected on such a favorable track on paper, is McLaren. Daniel Ricciardo, still in black crisis, 13th with an accident, and Norris sixth and penalized with 3 places, far behind of what could have been the potential of the car, giving another golden opportunity for Ferrari in the battle for third place in the championship.
The race, another question mark
On the race pace, what we saw on Friday are a Red Bull and a Mercedes far ahead of everyone else . For Charles Leclerc to keep his first place, on a track like Baku where the fastest cars can overtake easily, will be anything but simple and in Maranello they will have to play very well with strategies to get the best possible result. Of course, SF21 number 16 will probably find itself an active spectator in the fight between Hamilton and Verstappen that could give real sparks tomorrow. The Baku race, however, often gave rise to special situations, including accidents, tire management, Safety Car etc, difficult and unpredictable. However, the conditions are for a first-rate Grand Prix , in a year that was supposed to be boring and that is turning out to be one of the most fun.
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