'Norris misses opportunity in chaotic qualifying'

Title rivals Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri start the Azerbaijan Grand Prix seventh and ninth following a chaotic qualifying session that ran to double its normal length.

The Baku street circuit is notorious for creating incident - its combination of long straights and tight, right-angled corners are bounded by walls, so mistakes tend to be punished.

This time, difficult conditions created a challenge that led to six drivers - more than a quarter of the field - crashing during qualifying. The resulting six red flags was a Formula 1 record.

Piastri said: "You add in wind, kind of a tyre uncertainty, a little bit of rain, cold conditions on a street track like this and stuff's going to happen."

Stuff very much happened.

Williams driver Alex Albon started the cascade of accidents when he hit the inside wall at Turn One early in the first session.

Albon described it "a bit of a rookie mistake", saying he was caught out by the difference in grip between that lap and his first one.

But that difference in grip was caused by the wind. If the wind is head on, it gives the car more grip, as the aerodynamics become more effective.

So, turning in at the same point, the car slides less and turns more than expected; hence the accident.

It doesn't make the error forgiveable, but it does explain how something that all racing drivers hate - hitting the inside wall - can happen.

Norris described the difficulty of driving on a track with such small margin of error in such changeable conditions as "quite incredible".

He added: "I wish everyone could understand how difficult it was with the wind. I would say half the crashes you saw today were probably because of wind. Not all. Some of them were just braking too late and then trying to go for something that's not there."

The next two crashes involved Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg and Alpine's Franco Colapinto, who both hit the wall at Turn Four - the Argentine despite the fact that his team-mate Pierre Gasly was already in the escape road and there were yellow warning flags. Colapinto seems somehow to have got away with that one from the stewards' point of view.

These looked like a case of carrying too much speed, but Norris said: "Turn Four, where Colapinto went off, a lot of people locked up. It feels like one of the worst corners I've ever driven in my life. Just because the tailwind's 50 km/h or something.

"It might be that the next lap's 10, and you feel like, 'Oh, I can go a bit quicker.' You go quicker the next lap, and you're in the wall. It's very difficult."

Haas driver Oliver Bearman was crash number four, trying to take too much speed through Turn Two at the start of the second session and collecting the wall with his right rear wheel after an oversteer moment.

And then Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Piastri both went into their corners too fast in Q3 - Leclerc at Turn 15, where the downhill braking zone from high speed is renowned for its difficulty, then Piastri at Turn Three.

Piastri said: "I didn't feel like I did that much differently. But, you know, a tiny bit can make a massive difference. So, yeah, obviously I'm disappointed with how I performed.

"There was a bit of rain around, so I don't know if that contributed. I don't know if I got a gust of wind. But I'm never one to blame it on something other than myself. And that's what I'm going to stick with until I see something that tells me otherwise."

Piastri's accident seemed to leave an open goal for Norris, as it meant the Australian would be starting ninth, and at that point the Briton was in the running for pole.

Norris trails Piastri by 31 points in the championship, which is quite a margin to close even with eight races remaining.

So Piastri's first major error of the season handed Norris an opportunity on a plate. But it was one he did not take.

His final lap contained a series of small errors, before a big one in hitting the wall at Turn 15. He managed to do so side-on, so could continue, but his lap was a second off Max Verstappen's pole time, and he starts seventh, directly in front of Piastri.

Asked if he saw it as a missed opportunity, Norris said: "No, because I still did everything I could."

Norris said he felt he had got the worst of the conditions because he had chosen to go out first. He did so for good reasons - if there was yet another incident, he would be the first driver to get a chance to post a lap time.

"I went out first and it was just the wrong decision to make in the end," Norris said. "If everyone else got a yellow (flag) behind because someone else went off behind me, you wouldn't be asking me this question. Sometimes it goes your way around here, sometimes it doesn't.

"We thought we took a better option. I think it would have been if it wasn't splitting. It just started to spit again before the final run. And then going out first is just the incorrect thing.

"So, something we'll learn from. But no, the opportunity is there every single weekend to be on pole. I try and do that every weekend, and today I struggled more because of not making the best decision. But that's a hindsight thing, not an incorrect one at the time."

If Norris was looking on the bright side, the same was not true at Ferrari, who had another difficult session in an increasingly difficult season.

Baku had looked like an opportunity for them. Leclerc had been on pole at this track for the past four races, and some of those poles were in cars that were even more uncompetitive than this year's Ferrari.

But although Leclerc and Hamilton looked competitive through practice, they were not when it mattered.

And they did not even agree on what went wrong - Leclerc felt they had suffered for their decision to run medium tyres; Hamilton felt he had suffered for not using the mediums in the second session.

"It has been a extremely difficult weekend overall for me. Normally Baku is a track I really enjoy driving but it has been a bit of a pain for me, struggling with the balance of the car," Leclerc said.

"I changed quite a lot the car going into qualifying, which made it better but we couldn't make the medium work any more. We started to struggle massively to bring the medium to temperature and then I did this mistake, which cost us a lot."

Hamilton, by contrast, was feeling good in the car and said he "thought I might get pole today".

But Ferrari's tyre strategy backfired. He had used a set of medium tyres on Friday, which left him only two sets for qualifying, as opposed to the three of most others.

Ferrari were saving them for Q3 - but he didn't get there because he wasn't fast enough on the softs to make it through Q2.

"We should have used a medium in Q2," he said. "That's what everyone else did, we knew it was quicker and I can't tell you why we didn't end up using it, but we will take it internal.

"It's definitely tough to be in 12th, but as I said, I don't think that's from my driving. It's just execution."

The main focus of the grand prix will be on what the McLarens can do from their lowly starting positions.

The team can clinch their second consecutive constructors' championship on Sunday. To do so, they need to outscore Ferrari by nine points and not be outscored by Mercedes by 12 points and Red Bull by 33.

At the start of the weekend, that looked like a slam dunk. Not so much any more, even if there is no doubt they will win it in the end.

At the front, Verstappen is likely to dominate. Carlos Sainz, in the Williams, starts second with Racing Bulls' Liam Lawson third, followed by the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, who has been ill all weekend. Verstappen's Red Bull team-mate Yuki Tsunoda lines up sixth.

With a bunch of slower cars between them, Verstappen would be expected to be too far ahead to challenge by the time Norris and Piastri move up to the front, if they even can.

The mixed-up grid should lead to an eventful race, with the McLarens and Ferraris trying to make progress.

And at McLaren, Verstappen's return to form in Monza, followed by pole this weekend, has increased their concern about his threat on a championship basis.

That's even despite the fact that, at 96 points behind Piastri, the four-time champion would have to close at an average of 12 points a race to get level by the end of the season.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was asked after qualifying whether he saw Verstappen as a factor in the championship.

He said: "A firm yes. Can you write it capital? Because it was quoted capital.

"We don't have to forget that, first of all, it's Max Verstappen. World champion for the last four years, in a fast car.

"There are races where McLaren may not enjoy any advantage from a competitiveness point of view.

"And also Lando and Oscar, they are always there, so they will not necessarily be maximising the points available. Sometimes there will be a little bit more points for Lando, a little bit more points for Oscar, so they may take some points away from each other.

"We are very aware of this aspect, but we let them race, because they both deserve to pursue their aspirations. Therefore, yes, Verstappen and Red Bull in contention for the drivers' championship."

Azerbaijan Grand Prix

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