Formula 1

European Grand Prix 2016: Starting grid and lineup for Formula 1 race

Nico Rosberg will sit on the pole while Sergio Perez, who qualified in second, will start seventh after a five-place gearbox penalty.

by James Brady

Jun 19, 2016, 9:00 AM UTC

Dan Istitene/Getty Images

The Baku City Circuit has turned out to be one of the trickier tracks of the Formula 1 season. The inaugural qualifying session in Baku, Azerbaijan went much differently than anybody expected. All eyes were on the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and his teammate, Nico Rosberg going into Saturday, especially after the former looked so good and dominant throughout practice.

But Hamilton was anything but dominant when qualifying got underway. Rosberg bested Hamilton in each of the three qualifying sessions, but especially so in the third one, when Hamilton clipped the wall and drew a red flag with under three minutes to go in the final session. Hamilton was then out of qualifying and will start from 10th for the European Grand Prix on Sunday.

“The car was generally good, I just wasn’t able to get into the rhythm today,” Hamilton said. “Just wasn’t in it, just wasn’t hitting the apexes, wasn’t hitting the right braking zones, none of it was in the right places.”

Meanwhile, Rosberg took pole position and is in a very good position to improve his championship lead after it eroded to just nine points over the past two races, both wins for Hamilton.

Nobody had an easy time on the track, though. Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari were both out of the top five in practice, though the pair managed to get things under control in the third qualifying session, running fourth and fifth fastest, respectively. But they were out-qualified by Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull who came in third and, miraculously, Sergio Perez of Force India.

Perez qualified in second, about a full second behind Rosberg. But because he had a crash in practice and had to replace his gearbox, he was given a five-place grid penalty and will start Sunday’s race from seventh position.

“I think we were expecting ourselves to be strong around here but not that good,” Perez said. “To come away with P2 in this track, so easy to make a mistake, so easy to clip the wall and damage your car. Unfortunately it happened to me at the worst possible time in [practice three].”

Still, Perez looked great on the circuit of Baku throughout qualifying and will feel good about his chances to overtake, especially with the Torro Rosso of Daniil Kvyat right in front of him. From there it’s Felipe Massa’s Williams, and he’ll have Valtteri Bottas’ Williams right behind him when the race starts.

Max Verstappen, Ricciardo’s teammate at Red Bull, didn’t have a great qualifying session and finished in ninth. Romain Grosjean of the American-owned Haas F1 Team qualified in 11th, just missing the cutoff for the third qualifying session.

The drivers clearly don’t have the track totally down just yet and there will likely be plenty of yellow flags waving on Sunday. Whether or not Hamilton can get his Mercedes under control to do some overtaking to prevent Rosberg from creating too big a gap will be exciting to see. Whether or not Perez can move up from seventh and grab a podium after qualifying second overall is just as interesting.