GP Baku, Leclerc: “‘Light’ defense on Piastri was a mistake”

The Revenge

The Monza encore did not happen Charles Leclerc. The curse of Baku is not broken and the Monegasque Ferrari driver for the fourth consecutive year does not convert the pole position into victory. This time it was Oscar Piastri who celebrated, taking revenge for the defeat suffered in Italy by Leclerc. The decisive factor was the Australian’s overtaking of the Prancing Horse driver during the 20th lap. An episode – which occurred at the beginning of the stint with hard tyres – that Leclerc, with hindsight, would have handled differently.

“It was a wrong choice – Leclerc admitted to the microphones of Sky Sports F1 – I saw Oscar move, I didn’t know if he would overtake or not but I wasn’t too worried because I knew the DRS was very strong and I was still in the phase where I was getting the tyres up to temperature, so I couldn’t afford to go to the limit with the brakes like him. I knew I was in a difficult situation. That’s why I chose to stay on the line and then take the DRS back, thinking that with the DRS it would be easy to take it back. Instead, the situation was very different”.

DRS effect cancelled

McLaren’s impressive speed on the very long straight allowed Piastri to make some splendid defenses at Turn 1, frustrating Leclerc’s numerous overtaking attempts lap after lap.Once I was behind, even though I had DRS he was going like lightning on the straight, and from that point on we struggled. I had to push hard to try to stay as close as possible to the last corner, but even when I was close it wasn’t enough to be at his level at the end of the straight. It was a very difficult race and it was a misjudgement. I don’t know what I could have done to prepare myself more for this eventuality, then I realised it would be difficult to win”.

What also surprised Leclerc was the recovery made by Piastri at the end of the first and the beginning of the second stint: “The thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the gap we had before the pit stop and after – concluded the Ferrari driver – we expected it to take a lot of warm up with the hard, instead I was 6 seconds on Oscar, I stopped the next lap and he was immediately close to me. It’s something we’ll have to review because most likely that’s where we made a mistake. Then we struggled with the pace with the hard. We hadn’t done laps with so much fuel so far and we paid for the degradation with the hard“.