Leclerc at a loss to explain Azerbaijan qualifying record

Charles Leclerc has admitted there is no “magic answer” to his Baku brilliance after he charged to a fourth consecutive Azerbaijan Grand Prix pole position.

The winner in Monza last time out, the Monegasque recovered from crashing out in FP1 on Friday to put his Ferrari on pole once again, having previously done so in the last three years.

But Leclerc has been unable to translate any of those previous poles into a race win and conceded he was at a loss to pinpoint why he has been so hot on a Saturday in Baku.

“For some reason, there’s not that much scatter between my laps on this track. It looks like I’m very consistent. I don’t really have the magic answer, but I just like the rhythm of this track,” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about it and obviously, whenever you have a good weekend, you try to analyse. But I don’t really have a strong answer to it. I guess it just goes with my driving style very naturally, because most of the time, you have to work a lot to try and gain lap time.

“But there, I just feel good with the rhythm of this track for some reason. And yeah, that makes it a particularly good track for me.

“It was really good. But yeah, it’s also very difficult to compare it to other years. It’s not the best. I think the ’21 one was probably the best as we were in a very, very difficult year. I think we were fighting for P9, P10, that championship and to be on pole here was very special. However, it was a good lap. I mean, it was a really good lap.”

Pole man Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, in Parc Ferme after Qualifying

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

Leclerc explained how he pushed to the limit on a track where the close barriers leave no room for error, having felt comfortable since first jumping into the car on Friday morning.

“I just took a little bit more risk compared to the first attempt in Q3. It was important to just have a lap on the board, and then in the second lap, you just take more risk and see what happens,” he added.

“Luckily, I finished both of the laps, and they were good laps. The car felt really good since FP1. Honestly, we barely changed the car from FP1 to now. Straight away, I felt happy and the balance remained really good.

“We had to counter a little bit the track evolution because there’s a lot of track evolution here, but the feeling was there straight away in FP1, even though there were not many laps in FP1 and FP2. That didn’t stop us from recovering after that and to be at ease for the weekend.”