F1 | Leclerc: 6 seconds lost in the pit, but what are the reasons?

A bitter second place. At the end of an Azerbaijan Grand Prix that he felt he could win, especially after having accumulated a good advantage in the first stint, Charles Leclerc did not hide how that second place on the podium was too tight, because his ambitions were legitimately much higher.

After having led for almost twenty laps, the situation was reversed, because the Monegasque went from being the one to be overtaken to the one who had to attack, in a decisive role exchange, both in terms of methods and timing. The elements that characterized the race are many, both in the first and second part of the Grand Prix but, as a first piece of the analysis, it is interesting to focus on how the overtaking that completely changed the race came about.

It has not gone unnoticed how the Ferrari driver went from having a good safety margin of almost six seconds before the pit stop to finding himself under attack from the Australian after the pit stop, with a change of perspective that materialized in the space of just a few kilometers. This is a topic that is worth highlighting not only because it highlights the difference in approach and management of the race by the drivers, but also because it explains how the two teams reasoned.

The choice to stop one lap later

After a first part of the race essentially dominated, managing to make the difference on Piastri also from the point of view of tire management, given that the Australian had “burned” the fronts in an attempt to apply pressure during the first laps, Leclerc had managed to increase the advantage to almost six seconds. An important margin that, however, vanished in a few kilometers.

As expected on the eve, the first part of the race, the one in which the track was in the worst conditions, was affected by graining, so much so that the first pit stops came quite early, after about ten laps. Both due to the nature of the track and the conditions of the asphalt, still very dirty, the teams expected a rather slow warm-up phase for the hard tyre, also keeping in mind that the second stint would realistically be quite long. From this point of view, the teams on the one hand tend to rely on simulations, while on the other they analyse the data in real time from the track.

Looking at the outlap times of the drivers who stopped first, including Colapinto, Bottas, Russell, Alonso and Hamilton, we see that the best outlap is 2:04.183 (Russell), even if influenced by the fact that he could use the DRS in the final part of the lap. On the contrary, all the other laps are at the pace of 2:05 or 2:06, therefore considerably faster than those of Piastri who lapped in 2:03.253. Another element is added to this, namely the fact that for some of these drivers, even the second lap was not very aggressive.

The driver with whom a slightly different discussion can be approached is Sergio Perez, who lapped in 2:04.864, at least before finishing in the next lap behind Norris, who tried to slow him down in the central sector in order to give Piastri the opportunity to come out in front. It is interesting to note, however, that McLaren did not come in immediately, partly because the Woking team probably also expected a warm-up time that was perhaps longer, partly because the window on Norris was at the limit.

If you add these elements together, you understand why Ferrari was quite confident that, with a gap of almost six seconds in its favor, there was a safety margin to observe the moves of its opponents, not give up track position and still get back in the lead with Leclerc without major problems. On the other hand, clearly, one could argue that Piastri’s pit stop was easy to spot from a purely temporal point of view and that Ferrari put its driver in a more complex position, but evidently the Prancing Horse team thought more about a safe track position in the event of a Safety Car.

Leclerc’s return lap and Piastri’s outlap

While with hindsight one might rightly argue that Ferrari could have brought the Monegasque into the pits a lap earlier, there are some elements that realistically caught the Maranello team off guard, starting with Leclerc’s come-in lap.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Ferrari

Looking at the time history, it is easy to notice how in the moment of decline of the Ferrari driver in the final part of the stint, the trend was to lose about 4 tenths per lap. The problem is that in the penultimate lap before the break, the one in which Piastri returned to the pits, the times worsened not by four tenths with the previous passages, but by a full second, with a vertical drop that was difficult to predict in such a marked way. Even Sainz himself, although it is true that he had managed the tires differently, in the last laps of the stint began to be faster than Leclerc by several tenths, including in the Monegasque’s re-entry lap where you tend to exploit what is left of the tire.

This is the first element that took Ferrari by surprise because, if the decline had followed the trend of the previous laps, there would still have been a good margin to remain firmly in the lead with a small treasure to manage. On the other hand, there is the issue of Piastri, who pulled an extremely aggressive outlap out of the hat, also disobeying the team’s orders, which had suggested him to manage the tire in the first laps with the hard, given that in the opening stint he had burned the front ones in an attempt to stay with Leclerc.

Looking at the time, the McLaren driver recorded a 2:03.253, significantly faster than the time recorded by any other driver after the pit stop up to that point. These elements meant that from a six-second lead at the time of Piastri’s pit stop, the Ferrari driver found himself with an advantage of only one and a half seconds after his pit stop, with Alex Albon dividing the two.

Too soft an approach after the break

Leclerc did not hide that realistically the race was lost especially after his stop, given also a too soft approach both in the introduction of the stint and in the defense on Oscar Piastri, so much so that the Monegasque did not even really try to cover hoping to be able to attack again immediately after with the DRS. The Monegasque in fact lapped in 2:06.071, or on the times of the mid-ranking drivers who had stopped a few laps earlier.

Outlap Leclerc Telemetry Comparison – Baku Plates 2024

Photo by: Gianluca D’Alessandro

As planned, in fact the Ferrari driver opted for a conservative introduction lap of the hard, trying not to force it to be sure of not having problems later in the race. A regret also shared by Frederic Vasseur, who at the end of the race explained how realistically they were too conservative, with an attack time almost three seconds slower than that of Piastri.

Analyzing the data to understand where this difference originated, something very interesting emerges. Much of that gap comes from the first sector and, going even more specifically, from the first two corners, one of which is the one exiting the pit lane that puts you back on the track, where the limiter has already been removed. In that section, Leclerc was a good 17 km/h slower than Piastri and was among the most conservative in absolute terms, while in turn two the gap drops to around 10 km/h, partly also due to the presence of Albon. To have a temporal reference, of the approximately three seconds lost in the comparison of the out lap, two come from the first sector, while the remaining six/seven tenths were accumulated in the other two splits.

This was compounded by another issue, namely that Leclerc failed to find a better pace in the following laps, which put Piastri in the DRS zone. After the race, the Monegasque explained that he struggled to find grip, as also demonstrated by the fact that Sainz’s attack times were actually better: “As soon as I came out of the garage on the hards, we couldn’t find the grip that McLaren had. When Oscar passed me, I was quite calm. I concentrated on managing the tyres. After about ten laps, I thought everything was settling down and that maybe towards the end we would be in a better position. But with the dirty air, in the end my tyres were completely gone.”

Due to the accident and the problems, in the three free practice sessions Leclerc had never run with a high quantity of fuel, so much so that the only mini-stint done at the end of FP2 was with a fuel load with which he did his fast lap on the soft, having not topped up before returning to the track with the medium. This certainly could have had a negative impact, but it is true that, overall, there are several aspects that surprised Ferrari itself.