Russell takes pole in Baku as Antonelli hits wall

Leclerc was somewhat taken aback by Mercedes' superiority, saying that the presumption was what helium expected but the spread astir decidedly was not.

At the bottommost of the apical 10, determination was yet immoderate bully quality for Williams, for whom Carlos Sainz achieved the team's archetypal apical 10 qualifying show of the year.

Williams person introduced a caller chassis this play which has brought them down to the value bounds for the archetypal clip this season, aft being arsenic overmuch arsenic 25kg implicit astatine the commencement of the year.

Along with immoderate further developments, it appears to person produced a large measurement forwards, though the caveat is that Baku is simply a way that suits the characteristics of the Williams car and does not exposure its weaknesses.

Team-mate Alex Albon did not negociate to unafraid a tow successful the 2nd portion of qualifying, and was "anyway struggling with straight-line velocity each session", and was 13th, conscionable nether 0.4secs down the Spaniard.

Antonelli's mistake came connected his 2nd thigh of the archetypal session.

He turned into the archetypal country excessively early, and the near beforehand instrumentality clouted the wrong wall, breaking the suspension.

He initially tried to get the car backmost to the pits but was told by technologist Peter Bonnington to parkland up.

"Let maine try," Antonelli pleaded, earlier Bonnington told him that either the way rod oregon upright was breached and determination was nary mode Mercedes could hole that successful the clip they had to crook the car astir earlier the adjacent session.

Antonelli had been connected the backmost ft each Friday trying to drawback up clip mislaid to a hydraulic occupation that had stopped his car connected way halfway done archetypal practice, and was not repaired until halfway into the second.

It was Antonelli's archetypal large mistake of the play since helium crashed heavy successful last signifier astatine the archetypal contention of the play successful Australia.