Oscar’s consecration and Ferrari’s regret
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was one of the most intense and hard-fought races of a 2024 season that continues to provide surprises and emotions. An increasingly determined Oscar Piastri emerged victorious from the battle, showing hunger and talent at every Grand Prix, as well as the desire to earn his place as McLaren’s first driver. Piastri’s drive, without ever making the slightest mistake despite constant pressure from Leclerc, through the streets of Baku, is a true consecration for the Australian, whose talent adds to that of an already phenomenal grid.
Piastri and McLaren, however, were able to make the most of a great opportunity that their opponents left them, given that in Baku Ferrari was not, overall, inferior to McLaren. Once again the circuit was not particularly challenging from an aerodynamic point of view, but the SF24 is sending out decidedly positive signals after the updates in Monza, also considering that apart from Piastri’s McLaren, Mercedes has never really bothered Sainz or Leclerc, and that Red Bull is currently so “untranslatable” that it even has a Sergio Perez who is decidedly faster than Verstappen for the entire weekend.
The reality is that, overall, McLaren and Ferrari were decidedly similar in performance, even though the reds had decidedly something more on the medium tyre in the first stint. The superiority in tyre management, however, did not emerge at the end of the race because, as Albon and Norris’ stints also showed, the hard tyre, if managed correctly, allowed them to cover almost the entire duration of the Grand Prix and therefore Leclerc, who expected Piastri to collapse in the final as happened in the first stint (and as happened in the simulations during free practice) ended up suffering the so-called “cliff” of the tyres himself, after the infinite series of laps at extremely close range from the Australian’s McLaren who, between dirty air and traction efforts to try to overtake, ended up wearing out his rear tyres enormously. Having said that, however, Ferrari and Leclerc had the possibility of winning, and the victory did not come also due to their own shortcomings. The web fans obviously immediately took action to establish unequivocally whether the fault was only the team’s or only the driver’s, but the truth (in the opinion of the writer at least) is that both made a (single) fairly serious mistake and that the defeat came from the combination of the two.
The strategic error of the Ferrari wall
Starting from the team, the impression, observing all the data with caution, is that the Maranello strategists found themselves in a situation that could generate some confusion and struggled to read, in an extremely hectic moment, the situation in the correct way. If we observe the trend of the times of Leclerc and Piastri during the first stint, we note, in fact, an important aspect, that is, that on the eleventh lap the times of both Leclerc and Piastri begin to rise. Many are already making the pit stop because the medium tyre is reaching the end of its life for everyone. The initial good news for Ferrari is that Piastri has a worse collapse than Leclerc, so the approach naturally becomes to keep Leclerc on the track until he gains on his direct rival. Another consideration comes into play here, repeatedly underlined by the men of the red team during the weekend, that is, that the warm up phase of the hard tyre was particularly difficult, and this should have lowered if not completely cancelled out the effectiveness of the undercut. The idea was in fact that the driver returning to the track with a new hard tyre would have such difficulty getting the compound up to temperature that he would gain little or nothing from the driver who remained on the track with a medium tyre one lap more. The problem at Ferrari is that, with Piastri not stopping even after the first signs of a collapse, the performance on the track became increasingly slower, with a trend in times that in these cases increased practically exponentially lap after lap. There was therefore a moment in which the time lost on the track by Leclerc, who ended up losing 2 seconds per lap in 4 passes, slowed down his race significantly, and, above all, that at that point the undercut, for those who stopped, returned to having significant effectiveness, given how slowly those who remained on the track were lapping. So, the decision not to take the initiative at a certain point and not to stop Leclerc regardless of what McLaren did, despite the vertical collapse of the tire, meant that with the extra lap completed by the Monegasque, almost all of the 6 seconds of advantage accumulated in the first stint were consumed. This put Leclerc on the track immediately ahead of Albon, but still not in a position to best manage the introduction phase of the tire, with the Monegasque who, in attempting to carry out a slow introduction, found the McLaren number 81 in his mirrors in the DRS zone.
Leclerc’s mistakes
At this point the responsibilities of the driver himself come into play, who evidently underestimated the importance of the track position by braking at the first corner a little too conservatively compared to Oscar Piastri, who instead found another incredibly deep and effective braking (a little like Ricciardo in his heyday) after Roggia’s on Norris at Monza. It seems likely that Leclerc was surprised by Piastri’s effective attack, but that, by his own admission, he did not fight too much for the position at that point, convinced that he could then exploit the expected drop in tyres or in any case the long Baku straight to regain the lead. This clearly had an impact on the final result, because the impression, also seeing Sainz’s recovery, is that if Leclerc had managed to defend his position from Piastri’s initial attacks, the Australian would have had fewer and fewer chances and the clean air together with an optimal management of the set of tyres on the SF24 could have brought Leclerc to a victory that was, if not easy, at least highly probable. It must also be said that the team’s failure to correctly evaluate the “cliff” of the medium tyres also derives from not having been able to test the race pace with 2 drivers during Friday’s tests, following Leclerc’s accident in the first session, so a small mistake that probably had an impact on the final result, given how tight this Formula 1 is proving to be, in which every little detail makes a significant difference.
Defending his position on Perez then saved Leclerc’s race
Finally, it must be said that the dramatic accident between Sainz and Perez saved the second position of Leclerc himself, who arrived at the final laps with extremely worn rear tyres. The Monegasque was about to fall prey to Perez at the first corner, but in this case a strenuous defence of the position triggered everything that happened afterwards, with Sainz first passing Perez and then with the accident between the Spaniard and the Mexican. Again according to the writer, the responsibilities for this last collision fall more on Perez, since, being behind and with a lot of track on his left, he could have taken up much more space. In conclusion, Ferrari had the pace for victory in Baku, and this can only be positive news for the fans, but, at the same time, a sum of two errors that were not particularly gross but still important both by the team and the driver took first place away from the Maranello team. It is unfair, in our opinion, to blame one more than the other.
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