He smiles bitterly, shakes his head when they compliment him on the race, never like this time – as Enzo Ferrari used to say – second place is the first of the last and has the taste of a defeat. Charles Leclerc didn’t make it today either: four pole positions in Baku, plus the one in last year’s Sprint, and no wins. It’s a record, no driver had ever completed a similar series in qualifying on a circuit without ever celebrating the following day. The bad thing is that Charles, already fresh from his triumph in Monza, had made a fool of himself. He had gotten off to a great start, had dug out a gap of six seconds on Oscar Piastri, then, after about twenty laps and the pit stop, something changed. On the hard tyres the SF-24 lost a bit of pace: “Unfortunately in free practice we couldn’t test the race situation – explains the Monegasque -, we probably took a direction that created some problems for me. In the final I struggled to manage the tires, in a couple of corners I was even afraid of ending up against the wall. On the mediums we were much more competitive».
McLaren under investigation
The Australian was very good at overtaking him when he was most vulnerable. “Immediately after the pit stop I realised I had more grip and I tried,” said Piastri, who scored his second win of the season and of his career after the one in Hungary. “I knew I had no other chance and I threw myself in.” A spectacular, “risky” manoeuvre that worked perfectly. At that point Leclerc got into the exhausts of McLaren, the new team leader in the constructors’ standings, 20 points ahead of Red Bull (but under investigation for irregularities in the pits, as did Max Verstappen for irregular behaviour under the virtual safety car), but he never found the spark to get back in the lead. “When he overtook me I thought it was just a matter of keeping calm,” added Leclerc, “that by managing the tyres I would have passed him further ahead, but it was impossible. I realised I had lost the race when I couldn’t get close enough, they perhaps had a little less load, they were faster on the straight. They were going like lightning.” Team principal Frederic Vasseur admits that missing a lot of time in the first free practice sessions “weighed a bit, but we mustn’t look for excuses.” As for Charles, he adds, “maybe after the first stint he was a bit too optimistic: it was important to defend the tyres but more importantly the first position.”
Fifteen points thrown away
The result is a bitter GP, which paradoxically confirms the progress of the SF-24 updated from the Italian GP but deeply disappoints the Prancing Horse men. Carlos Sainz, for example, after an afternoon spent chasing had finally grabbed the podium when he hooked up with Sergio Perez on the straight towards turn 3, a contact that cost both of them a crash into the wall and retirement. “I’m sorry for what happened to Carlos – concludes Leclerc -, it wasn’t a great day for us”. It’s 15 points thrown away that distance the Reds (now at -51) from the top of the constructors’ standings. “It’s true that there is a bit of frustration – concludes Vasseur -, for the accident and for the victory going to Piastri, you can’t always win but we must always think about doing the best job possible”.
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