Leclerc was somewhat taken aback by Mercedes’ superiority, saying that the position was what he expected but the gap most definitely was not.
At the bottom of the top 10, there was finally some good news for Williams, for whom Carlos Sainz achieved the team’s first top 10 qualifying performance of the year.
Williams have introduced a new chassis this weekend which has brought them down to the weight limit for the first time this season, after being as much as 25kg over at the start of the year.
Along with some additional developments, it appears to have produced a big step forwards, although the caveat is that Baku is a track that suits the characteristics of the Williams car and does not expose its weaknesses.
Team-mate Alex Albon did not manage to secure a tow in the second part of qualifying, and was “anyway struggling with straight-line speed all session”, and was 13th, just under 0.4secs behind the Spaniard.
Antonelli’s error came on his second lap of the first session.
He turned into the first corner too early, and the left front wheel clouted the inside wall, breaking the suspension.
He initially tried to get the car back to the pits but was told by engineer Peter Bonnington to park up.
“Let me try,” Antonelli pleaded, before Bonnington told him that either the track rod or upright was broken and there was no way Mercedes could fix that in the time they had to turn the car around before the next session.
Antonelli had been on the back foot all Friday trying to catch up time lost to a hydraulic problem that had stopped his car on track halfway through first practice, and was not repaired until halfway into the second.
It was Antonelli’s first major mistake of the season since he crashed heavily in final practice at the first race of the season in Australia.
