Why does Pirelli expect a one-stop strategy for today's Baku race despite the softest compounds?

Despite the three softest compounds available at Baku, Formula One's sole tire supplier, Pirelli expects the one-stop strategy to dominate today's race in normal conditions.

Saturday's qualifying seemed to go on for ever, with a record number of red flags, plenty of yellow ones and a few drops of rain. It finally ended with yet another pole position for Max Verstappen, his very first fastest qualifying lap at this track.

It was only in the closing moments that the Red Bull driver managed to get under the 1m41.595s set by Williams’ Carlos Sainz, with a best time of 1m41.117s. This was Verstappen’s sixth pole of the season, his 46th in total. Red Bull Racing’s first pole in Baku was its 109th.

Williams driver Carlos Sainz will line up on the front row of the grid for the 15th time in his career, six of those being pole positions. Liam Lawson was third for Racing Bulls, his best ever qualifying, in a time of 1m41.707s. Alongside him will be Andrea Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) just one hundredth slower than the New Zealander.

However, the championship leaders Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will line up from the midfield. The championship leader was sailing through Qualifying, looking right in the mix, but he made a mistake on his first hot lap in Q2, and hit the barriers. That ended his Qualifying and left him ninth with no time set.

It opened the door for his team-mate to steal a march on his team mate, but instead he had a scrappy lap, and that left him down in seventh on a day more was possible.

For the third free practice session, the track was definitely in worse condition than on Friday, because of overnight rain and, above all, because of the wind blowing a lot of dirt onto the track surface. Grip level then improved considerably over the course of the sixty minutes.

As was the case yesterday, the teams tried to save the three available sets of Medium as much as possible. In fact, Aston Martin's Lance Stroll was the only driver to use the C5. Six drivers – the Alpine, Haas and Racing Bulls pairs – also used the Hard along with the Soft, with the C6 being the only compound used by the remaining 13 drivers.

Temperatures were much lower in qualifying than in FP3, the track dropping by around 10 °C from 35 to 24 °C. On top of that, there was some occasional drizzle and gusts of wind which further slowed performance, to the extent that the pole time is only slightly quicker than the best time from Friday’s FP2.

Very unusually, the compound use was very evenly split between Soft and Medium in qualifying: 166 laps on the C6, 162 with the C5.

Pirelli brought its three softest compounds for this weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, expecting that it should spice things up in terms of strategy.

However, the long-run simulations from Friday's three hour of practice indicate that the fastest route is a one-stop. The best approach might be to start on the medium compound before switching to the hard tyres later on.

As for the C6 compound which is not only the softest compound available at Baku, but it is the softest rubber in Pirelli's six-compound range, it is unlikely to be used in the race, but it cannot be ruled out entirely, for example in the case of someone looking to do a short first stint, before running in clear air and going all the way to the chequered flag.

Commenting on the strategy, Pirelli's Motorsport Director Mario Isola said: “A very unusual qualifying session, because of how long it lasted and in terms of tyre usage. We knew that when it came to overall performance, the difference between the C5 and C6 compounds would be very small and would vary from car to car and even from one driver to another.

"The drop in temperature the drivers had to contend with in qualifying, exacerbated by how long it went on for, meant the performance gap came down even further.

"Therefore, the choice between the two compounds was subjective. In fact, at first glance it would seem that the Soft compound was the most effective, contrary to what had appeared to be the case after yesterday."