World champion Max Verstappen led the one and only practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as Formula One returned with a bang on Friday.
A one-month break since racing in Melbourne had given teams the time back at their factories to try and come up with ways to reduce Red Bull’s early supremacy.
Wins for Verstappen in Bahrain and Australia with his teammate Sergio Perez scoring in Saudi Arabia has left the grid playing catch-up on the streets of the Azerbaijani capital.
Complicating matters is the new-look race weekend with Friday morning’s lone practice session followed by qualifying for Sunday’s race.
Saturday is now a stand-alone day devoted to the sprint, with a shortened qualifying version dubbed ‘the Sprint shootout’ now shaping the grid for the 100-kilometre (62-mile) dash.
This is the first of six sprints this season, double the number held in 2021 and 2022.
That gave the practice session on the notoriously hard to navigate streets of Baku added jeopardy, proving encouraging for some like Red Bull but disastrous for others, notably Alpine.
Perez had led early before Fernando Alonso flying this season in the rejuvenated Aston Martin as Lewis Hamilton came in with a brake issue, with George Russell following his Mercedes teammate back to the garage.
Yuki Tsunoda was the first to feel Baku’s infamous bite with a spin in the first quarter of an hour, his AlphaTauri’s rear right tyre ripped to pieces.
Then disaster struck Alpine, flames flickering from the back of Pierre Gasly’s car.
The Frenchman tried to nurse his stricken car back to the pits but with the fire quickly becoming a bonfire he wisely hopped out, prompting the first red flag of the weekend and plenty of work for the Alpine mechanics to get his car fit for qualifying in a few hours time.
Kevin Magnussen’s Haas had also come to a halt, the red flag eating into precious practice time.
Practice got back under way with half an hour remaining but Alpine’s session went from bad to worse with Esteban Ocon’s car back in the garage and up on the ramp “as a precaution”, the team reported.
That’s the last thing the French outfit were hoping for after Gasly and Ocon’s double retirement in Australia.
With Alonso joining the pitlane gang only Hamilton and Oscar Piastri were out on the circuit.
The closing 10 minutes produced a late flurry of activity, with Perez displacing Verstappen at the top of the time sheets.
With five minutes left, Charles Leclerc produced a decent time to split the Red Bulls, then the Ferrari driver went fastest only for Verstappen to pip him at the death by 0.037sec.
Carlos Sainz in the other Ferrari took fourth, Lando Norris was fifth in his extensively upgraded McLaren.
Hamilton took 11th and Russell 17th with Mercedes downplaying the subdued showings on set-up issues.
ALONSO’S CHEEKY RESPONSE TO TAYLOR SWIFT RUMOURS
Spanish Formula One veteran Fernando Alonso arrives in town for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix with the glow of a man very much in love.
Not perhaps with Taylor Swift, he good naturedly refused repeated opportunities to confirm (or deny) rumours he was dating the American singer – but with an old flame – Formula One.
“It’s happy days,” beamed the 41-year-old at his new team Aston Martin’s temporary weekend ‘cabin’ on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku.
“This season has been surprisingly good to be honest. We thought to have a decent car but not to challenge Mercedes and Ferrari, that was a surprise for us.” So good in fact Alonso, the 2005 and 2006 world champion, has enjoyed a run of three consecutive podiums for the first time since 2013.
That is in part down to the investment and belief of the owner of Aston Martin, Lawrence Stroll, and in part due to Alonso’s rekindled mojo for the sport.
After a two-year timeout from F1, and an unspectacular return at Alpine, his former Renault team, Alonso jumped on board Stroll’s project over a frantic weekend of telephone calls last summer.
A 48-hour engagement has produced a happy marriage, with Alonso third in the driver’s championship and Aston Martin second only to Red Bull in the constructors’ ahead of the fourth leg of the season on the streets of the Azerbaijani capital.
And now the prospect of a 33rd win, but first for 10 years in the Indian Summer of his career, is based on far more than the ramblings of a not-so-old man from Oviedo.
“The aim is for the team to fight for world championships,” said Alonso. “I don’t think we have an option in 2023 because of Red Bull but in 2024 you never know, you saw the step we made up this winter so why not another step next winter.”
Much has been made of the ageing idol returning for one last grand hoorah – but Alonso isn’t having any of that.
To make his point he lists the notable successes he enjoyed away from the track which perhaps did not receive the merit they deserved.
They include winning the 2018-2019 Le Mans 24 Hour Race, the pinnacle of endurance racing, a tilt at the IndyCar Series, and lining up in the most gruelling event on motorsport’s calendar – the Dakar Rally.
“They really put you out of your comfort zone and push you to a higher level. – Recharged batteries –
“It did help, the time out, maybe not so much in the driving style but in mentality and approach, the motivation,” he said.
“When you are 18 years in F1 it’s not that you lose motivation, I always had motivation, but I was tired of travelling, I was tired of the routine, repeating the same things, so the two years out of the sport were very refreshing, charging my batteries.
“Maybe I’m driving similar but mentally I’m much more fresh, happy to come to the circuit early, happy to keep chatting with engineers, PR stuff, events, sponsors, I have full batteries now, while in 2018 I was empty.”
When asked to compare his driving now to the championship winning years, he answers without the slightest hesitation: “I’m much better now, 100 percent.”
Originally published as F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2023: Qualifying, grid, race time, results, sprint rules, schedule