Azerbaijan Grand Prix: Qualifying Recap

The opening round of knockout qualifying – Q1, saw Ocon and Bearman up to speed quickly in their respective VF-26s. Utilizing just the one set of Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires, Ocon advanced into Q2 thanks to a best lap of 1:45.039 – his time good for P10, with Bearman moving on courtesy of a 1:45.228 to claim P13 – with only the fastest 16 advancing.

Q2 promised much, with top 10 pace once again evidenced on the soft tires, but the session ultimately ended in heartache for both Bearman and Ocon as a late yellow flag forced them to abort their respective hot laps in the final couple of minutes. Bearman’s earlier banked lap, a 1:44.775, saw the Briton exit in P11 – just one tenth of a second shy of making Q3. Ocon’s quickest time of 1:45.016 left the Frenchman down in P14.

George Russell celebrated a qualifying clean sweep – the Mercedes driver fastest in all three sessions, claiming pole position in Q3 with a fastest lap of 1:42.526.

Ollie Bearman:

“I wouldn’t have improved on my final lap, I would’ve repeated the lap time, but maybe I would’ve got a better slipstream to finish. It’s annoying and tough because we came from Madrid, which was a really horrible weekend, and then we come here and we’ve been in the fight for Q3 since Thursday, along with Esteban, so it’s a shame – but we can be proud of the hard work. In Q1, it was challenging with track position, but in Q2 it was better and I was able to put together a better lap time. I can see a tenth in my lap for sure, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I missed out on FP2, only doing three laps, so I missed out on a lot of running, but we were incredibly competitive. It will be a better day tomorrow, I know it.”

Esteban Ocon:

“We were on for a Q3 lap, and the car was working well. We haven’t had many chances this season with this car, and we improved things, and today we had a car for Q3. We had a yellow flag, and that was it. I had a gust of wind the lap before, but I was on for a Q3 lap again, and then I had to back off on the exit of Turn 15 to make sure I wasn’t going to get a penalty, and I lost three or four tenths, so I have no words. At the end of the day, we were competitive, but we can’t seem to get there.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“We’re all very disappointed about missing out on Q3 by such a tiny margin, but there are lots of positives today. Ollie didn’t get that much running in FP2, but the way he turned up this morning was good. In qualifying, as everybody’s found, today has been really windy, tricky conditions. You saw how many cars were making mistakes out there in FP3 and in qualifying, and tires were on the edge as well. It’s been very challenging conditions, but I’m really proud of the team on how we executed both sessions, and got the best out of it. It was very unlucky that we didn’t get into Q3, but it was a huge effort from the team – I’m really happy. We’ve got decent pace, so we’ll really try and put it together for tomorrow.”