Verstappen masters chaos to snatch Baku pole as Sainz, rain and red flags fall away
Six red flags, gusts that changed corner to corner, a sprinkle of late-session drizzle and one driver who looked like he’d read the script twice. Max Verstappen walked Baku’s high wire better than anyone, dragging his Red Bull to another pole in a qualifying session that veered from farce to finesse and back again.
By the end, the stopwatch said what most trackside eyes already knew: while everyone else wrestled the city’s wind tunnels and concrete canyons, Verstappen found grip where there shouldn’t have been any and time where there definitely wasn’t much left.
The day belonged to the conditions as much as the cars. Baku is fickle on a calm afternoon; on Saturday it was downright spiteful. The wind whipped through the tall buildings, flipping direction between blocks, and a light drizzle kissed the circuit just as Q3 should’ve been hitting its crescendo. Instead, we got the most red-flagged qualifying on record, a stop-start rhythm that heaped pressure onto every out-lap and lured mistakes from those trying to seize a window.
At first, it looked like Carlos Sainz had ripped the moment away. The Williams driver banked a superb lap on mediums after the first Q3 interruption, hustling the car with just enough margin to keep the rears alive, just enough commitment to put everyone else on notice. That became the target. And as further stoppages arrived — including the big one when Oscar Piastri found the barriers — Sainz’s time began to look like it might just survive the storm.
Verstappen, for his part, had already been on a lap to dethrone Sainz when the red flags bit — “mere hundreds of metres” from the line before being parked back in pit lane. It could’ve rattled him. Instead, it sharpened the edge.
When the track went green again, the temperature had slipped and the surface had that treacherous sheen. Most tiptoed. Verstappen tiptoed… and then attacked. On softs, he played the first sector like a violin: nothing flashy through Turns 1 and 2, but the moment he felt the car, he went hunting. The sweep through Turns 3 and 4 told the tale — a decisive gain as Sainz had to catch a brief rear snap at T4, the Williams bleeding time while the Red Bull threaded the needle.
From there, the two were virtually locked together in the middle sector, all the way to the corner that mattered most. Sainz executed Turn 16 beautifully — the sort of committed, patient arc that’s easy to admire and hard to replicate with the walls closing in. It clawed him back a chunk, enough to make you wonder.
But Baku has a way of settling arguments in a straight line. Red Bull’s trim — less wing, cleaner drag — sang down the 2km run to the flag. Verstappen found what he needed and then some, pulling back the tenths he’d leaked and sealing a lap that felt inevitable. Williams, oddly down on straight-line speed all weekend, couldn’t hang on the final blast.
Strip the drama away and the picture’s simple: Verstappen adapted quicker, found rhythm earlier and trusted the rear end when others were bracing for another gust. That’s the difference between a good lap in Baku and a pole lap in Baku.
The subplot beneath the headline was messy and expensive. Piastri’s crash iced a shot at the front and leaves him mired in the pack for Sunday. Lando Norris also got caught on the wrong side of the timing wave and starts deeper than McLaren would like. For Sainz, there’s a near-miss to digest — a lap that was good enough to bloody some noses, just not quite enough to keep Verstappen off the top spot.
What does it mean for the race? On paper, the path opens nicely for Red Bull. With the main threats scattered and Baku historically stingy on overtakes outside the main straight (and that short DRS dash from T2 to T3), track position is king. Pirelli’s softest C6 compound is back this weekend, the tyre maker clearly nudging teams toward two stops. Don’t be shocked if the pit walls push the other way. A one-stop typically wins the argument here unless the Safety Car plays a heavy hand, and Azerbaijan hasn’t exactly been shy about deploying it.
Sainz’s Williams has genuine pace in the corners and was brilliantly handled through the worst of Turn 16. If the team can find a bit of top-end or hang Verstappen in DRS, the game stays interesting. But if Red Bull controls the first stint and manages the tyres without exposing itself on the restart roulette, this is Verstappen’s to convert — clean air, clear mind, fewer headaches.
Of course, this is Baku. You can lead by a mile and still end up parked in an escape road, or win it from nowhere when the field blows itself apart. But based on Saturday’s survival test, only one driver looked perfectly at home in the chaos. That tends to translate on Sunday.
