BBC Radio 5 Live

Tune into BBC Radio 5 live now for coverage from Azerbaijan. Or use the Live Coverage tab on this page.

The tyres are being undressed, the cars are on the grid, the heat rippling the air around them... It's almost time.

Image source, .

Jenson Button was saying yesterday that this is the best - and perhaps only - place to get your overtake on.

Image source, AFP

Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev has told Sky Sports: "It is a big honour for us to hold such a race. I'm very grateful to Mr Ecclestone for selecting us to host this race.

"We are a young independent country, only 25 years ago and this is some of the indications of our achievements. Hopefully the guests will enjoy today."

Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone adds: "They have done a wonderful job, I'm very proud."

A lot of the problems in this morning's GP2 action, which Magnussen refers to, stemmed from confusion over the safety car line and pit-lane line. One to keep an eye on.

Some quotes from some of the drivers. Kevin Magnussen: "We saw in the GP2 races a lot of crashes and there were not a lot of cars finishing, so that's why it is so important to finish the race."

Felipe Nasr: "Anything is possible, from our starting position hopefully we can move up a bit and there might be some opportunities, I'm really looking forward to this one."

Jenson Button: "I'm looking forward to it, it will be more complicated than some people think and hopefully we will have fun. You can't be patient in P19. You have to go for it."

Image source, Getty Images

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer in Baku

McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button face a long race after a difficult qualifying session. Alonso’s run of making it into Q3 came to an end - as it was always likely to do on a track with a 2.1km straight.

Alonso pointed out the McLaren was losing “0.6-0.7secs on one straight” but still felt he could have done better had the team’s traffic management been better. On the radio he told them it “couldn’t have been worse”.

To the media later, he said he was “out of sequence with the cars around us… we found ourselves always passing two or three cars in their slow laps.

"If it happened once, OK you accept it and it's the way it is, but it happened all the laps in Q1, all the laps in Q2 so probably we could do a little bit better job next time.”

Jenson Button, meanwhile, is 19th after making a right horlicks of his qualifying, going off at Turn 15, spin-turning, with over-heating the rears, and then incorrectly deciding not to stop to replace them, thinking he had enough margin to get through anyway. Button seemed surprisingly relaxed about it afterwards."

Image source, Getty Images

• The cars are expected to reach speeds in excess of 210mph at the Baku street circuit which is being billed as the fastest in the world.
• The anticlockwise track features 20 corners, and at 3.7 miles in length, is the second-longest on the calender behind Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps Circuit.
• The Baku race will take place 28 metres below sea level.
• Incredibly, turns eight to 11, the narrow, uphill section which winds upwards past the old city's walls, is just 7.8 metres wide. 

Image source, Getty Images

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer in Baku

"The characteristics of the Baku track are clearly playing to the strengths of the Mercedes engine. Not so much on absolute power, where it is not very different from the Ferrari, but more in terms of power and torque delivery and energy recovery and deployment over the lap.

"This has helped Manor have a strong weekend, with Rio Haryanto and Pascal Wehrlein qualifying 17th and 18th - although Wehrlein had a broken DRS and would have been 13th. Nevertheless, it's fair to say Haryanto is surprising a few people this year. He came in as a pay-driver with an OK record in the junior formula, where he proved quick but inconsistent.

"But he is now four-all with Wehrlein - a highly regarded Mercedes protege in qualifying. That’s great for Haryanto. But probably not such brilliant news for Wehrlein’s hopes of one day replacing either Lewis Hamilton or Nico Rosberg at Mercedes."

Image source, Getty Images

The Azerbaijan national anthem is being performed. It's quite catchy.

Sing along. You know the words.

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer in Baku

So, Ferrari. A week ago, they were very, very nearly as fast as Mercedes and arguably should have won in Canada.

Here, Sebastian Vettel has qualified 1.2 seconds slower than Nico Rosberg - which probably means the car is more than more than 1.5secs off the absolute Mercedes potential, had Lewis Hamilton not messed up his qualifying. What on earth is going on? The answer is, Ferrari don’t know.

The obvious conclusion to which many have jumped is that the Mercedes engine is still miles ahead - but that is wrong.

And Vettel said so. “We have a strong engine, we've made very good progress on that front,” he said. “I know that's not the place where we lose the most time. There are a lot of corners here where we struggle to extract the same out of the low-speed corners as other people do.

"That’s something we need to understand because we know our car is quick but here and there around this track we seem to struggle a bit.”

Ferrari’s problem is that the car may be “quick”. It’s just isn't “quick” anywhere near often enough.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, .

As much as it pains me to say it - I can't see it happening today for Kimi.

Or any time soon, really.

It's my first ever father's day as a father today... But I'm choosing to spend it with you lot.

I expect you all to send me cards.

Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer in Baku

There were some frustrated faces down at Force India after qualifying. They knew they could have had both cars on the first two rows, but instead Sergio Perez will start seventh and Nico Hulkenberg 12th.

Perez qualified a brilliant second but has a five-place grid penalty and Hulkenberg’s qualifying began to unravel when he spun at Turn 16 and then a miscommunication between driver and pit wall meant he abandoned what was the final lap he had a chance to do. Why were they so quick?

Perez said they did not understand. But this track could have been made for Force India, who have the best engine in F1 in the Mercedes, and a car that is very good in short-duration slow and medium-speed corners, but lacks overall aerodynamic performance in faster and longer curves.

Image source, Getty Images