Charles Leclerc crashes out in red-flagged marred qualifying in Baku

Charles Leclerc crashed out of Q3 at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, seemingly caught out by the changing conditions in the crucial minutes of qualifying.

The Ferrari driver ended up in the barriers at Turn 15 with seven minutes remaining in Q3, damaging his car and bringing out the red flags.

Charles Leclerc crashes out of qualifying in Azerbaijan

The qualifying session in Baku was marred by a record-breaking number of red flags due to crashes, resulting in lengthy delays as Q3 began more than 20 minutes later than originally scheduled.

Alex Albon, Nico Hulkenberg, Franco Colapinto, and Ollie Bearman had all brought out the red flags through crashes in Q1 and Q2, and Charles Leclerc made it a fifth red flag with a crash in Q3, to match the previous record, before a late crash from Oscar Piastri eclipsed that to make it six stoppages in a single qualifying session.

Leclerc’s crash took place as the Monegasque was on a push lap for his first run in Q3, with the threat of rain coming in from the Caspian Sea.

A slight drizzle had started in the opening minutes of Q3, with Max Verstappen radioing in to his race engineer to report on the slippery conditions.

While Carlos Sainz, Liam Lawson, and Isack Hadjar all managed to complete a lap to form a top three, Leclerc slid into the barriers at Turn 15 and ended up with his Ferrari buried, nose-first, in the tyres.

Blocking the track and with debris scattered everywhere, Leclerc clambered out while the session was red-flagged.

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Speaking to Sky Sports after the session, Leclerc expressed his frustration at the fact that his strong streak of pole positions at Baku has come to an end during a challenging weekend.

“I have been struggling massively,” Leclerc admitted, “which normally I come to Baku and everything flows pretty naturally but unfortunately this year wasn’t the case.

“I think I understood why and in qualifying I changed the car a lot to try and change the feeling, and the feeling was getting better until we actually put the medium tyres on and everything went [wrong].

“It was very, very difficult the moment we put the medium tyre [on]. For some reason yesterday it felt like the better tyre on our car. Today, it felt like we could never reach the right window with the tyres and that made it very difficult very quickly.”

While Leclerc’s off took place just as rain began to sprinkle over the Baku City Circuit, Charles Leclerc made sure to point out to reporters that the weather wasn’t the reason for his struggle.

“The rain did not affect our performance at all,” he told media.

“It was purely my mistake, definitely, there is no excuse. The medium tyre simply wasn’t working today, and we struggled incredibly.

“After yesterday it seemed that Lewis Hamilton was performing well with that compound, but today the temperatures dropped and we didn’t manage to get the tires in the right operating window.

“Before the mistake, I was still 0.8 seconds behind the leaders. The soft tire was performing better, but it needed to be saved for the final lap.”

Leclerc will line up 10th on the grid, having to fight his way through the Mercedes, McLaren, and Red Bull duos for a shot at his first victory at the street circuit.

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