F1 | Ferrari: The two reasons for a bitter defeat for Leclerc

It’s a bitter second place. Before the analyses and evaluations, Leclerc’s expression said it. In Charles’ case, body language is always an open book, accessible to all, and today it was very clear how tight the second place in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is ​​for the Monegasque.

Pole position, leadership for 19 laps, then the overtaking by Oscar Piastri who switched roles. The Australian in the role of hare, Leclerc in that of hunter with several arrows at his disposal to overturn everything again. But lap after lap while Piastri’s masterpiece took shape, Charles’s bitterness also grew progressively: once again in Baku the victory would not be his.

And yet, from the first stint of the race a clear verdict had arrived. After maintaining the lead, Leclerc managed the first five laps with Piastri in the DRS zone, then he began to pull away. A progressive escape that led him to build a gap of six seconds on the fourteenth lap. A strong signal. On lap 15 Piastri pitted to switch from the medium to the hard tyres, a move immediately covered by the Ferrari garage the following lap. On lap 17 Piastri crossed the finish line just over a second behind Leclerc: what happened?

The answer is in the outlap. Piastri ran his outlap in 2’03″253, Leclerc in 2’06″071. The instructions given to Charles by the team were clear, that is to take care of the tyres on the outlap, but the difference of almost three seconds denotes a very aggressive start to the stint by Piastri or an excess of caution by Leclerc.

The numbers suggest the first hypothesis more, given that even Sainz’s outlap (2’05”361) was not far from Leclerc’s time, but Piastri did not suffer any setbacks from his very fast start to the stint. With the McLaren in his slipstream, Leclerc held firm for two laps, then was caught by surprise by Piastri’s attack.

“Today we lost the win for two reasons,” Leclerc admitted. “The first was the tyre management on our out-lap after the pit stop. We expected it to take everyone a long time to get the hards up to temperature, but that wasn’t the case for McLaren, who immediately got their tyres into the right working window and gained a lot of time. The second was not having fought harder with Oscar when he overtook me. I knew we had a long race ahead of us and my aim was to preserve the tyres, stay within DRS range and pass him later.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24, chases the uncatchable Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38

Photo credit: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

“We clearly underestimated the speed they had on the straights today,” Charles concluded, “using a set-up with less aerodynamic load than ours: this made them too fast for us to try to overtake. Overall, it wasn’t the best day for our team, but we’ll go to Singapore even more determined.”

The positive aspect for Leclerc is that he maintained a second position that with two laps to go was already lost. With the rear tires in crisis, Charles was forced to increase his lap times by more than a second and this favored the arrival of the Perez-Sainz tandem behind him. The contact between the two put an end to Leclerc’s risks and to the race itself, frozen under the virtual safety car until the checkered flag.

The incident increased McLaren’s stage haul by four points, costing Ferrari and Red Bull 11 and 12 points respectively. If in Monza Ferrari had collected more than the single-seater would have allowed on the purely technical front, the impression is that in Baku the potential of the car was not converted into the points within reach.
“We were probably a bit too conservative at the start of the second stint,” admitted Frederic Vasseur, “and having to drive in dirty air was difficult for Charles, who ended up damaging his hard tyres. We leave Baku with a result below expectations but it was nice to see that, like in Monza, we were battling with McLaren and were competitive. We need to stay focused and keep fighting because there are still a lot of races to go.”