Lewis Hamilton will apologise to Charles Leclerc for not swapping back in F1 Azerbaijan GP, as the pair and Frederic Vasseur reflect on low-key result.
It looked like Ferrari will be in play for a podium at least if not win after Friday running in F1 Azerbaijan GP at Baku. Leclerc finished in Top 3 in both the practice sessions and Hamilton topped FP2. But their grand prix was undone after a bad qualifying performance when conditions changed.
The tyres didn’t click as they did on Friday. Hamilton was knocked out in Q2 due to potential strategy error of using soft instead of medium, while Leclerc didn’t ascertain the grip to crash out in Q3. It left them 10th and 12th for the grand prix, where they split strategy.
Leclerc started on the medium and gained a place on Lando Norris after safety car re-start. But the Monegasque couldn’t hold on and eventually lost it later in the grand prix. He had a power unit issue early on, which hampered part of his race if not all of it.
His pace drop forced Ferrari to swap him with Hamilton, who gained places to be running ninth. The Brit tried hard to get by the pack of Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Norris, but he failed to do so just like Leclerc. He was supposed to give back eighth to the Monegasque but misjudged in the end.
He slowed on the main straight after receiving a late call, but they missed out. Hamilton apologised to Leclerc, who didn’t mind due to the position but reminded of applied rules to be followed. The Brit felt positive despite the results, while the Monegasque rued lack of pace.
In fact, team boss Vasseur didn’t have answers for the pace drop from Friday, which he put it down to changing conditions and performance of tyres. He expanded on the swap call, which was needed to try and catch Norris and ultimately Lawson, who was running in fifth.
Race, result –
Hamilton: “Definitely, not where we want to be bit obviously disappointing result at the end of the day, but I did go forward from 12th, which was partly due to a good start and I think my pace was generally good. I mean, I was flat out, I was definitely much better, much happier in the car. It was difficult today to close up on the cars ahead. They were very fast clearly qualifying is very important, and we missed out on that. If you look at the Williams, where they qualified and finished there, so yeah. But there’s lots of positives to take from it and definitely, it’s a draw from the weekend, which I’ll try and take into the next one.
“Oh, well, I was going long in the hope there would be some sort of safety car, and there was nothing, so that was unfortunate. This happened a lot this year where you’ve just not seen any incidents. Yeah, and everyone was obviously in that DRS train for quite some time. But also, I think our set up choice to the end, I think wasn’t great and obviously our procedure, the execution in qualifying was not great, which put us in that position. So to be fighting for 8th and 9th is not what we want, I think. If we had optimise the weekend, I think we would have been slightly further ahead, maybe fourth and fifth.”
Leclerc: “Yeah, I think it was a bit of a roll of the dice to get the right strategy today. I mean, the medium-hard or hard-medium was kind of the same. I mean, it was obviously the same on paper. And then you will just hope that you were with the most amount of fast cars on the same strategy, and I ended up with, obviously, Liam, which was very strong in the straight, very strong in the last sector, and very difficult to overtake, even on the cars that had reverse strategy, and I got stuck behind him the whole race.
“So it was very frustrating. But yeah, good job to him. And at the end of the day, the only thing I can do is to be harsh with myself and not having performed the way I should have yesterday in qualifying, obviously with a mistake in Q3. It’s been a very strong season so far, but this weekend I haven’t been on the level where I should be, and I pay the price of it today.”
Vasseur: “Yeah, I think the pace was okay. The issue is that, we had two different situations. Charles, he had the issue on the engine – it was not five tenths a lap, but it was enough to spend your week behind someone and not to be able to overtake. And then the cost is not the two tenths that you are losing on the engine, it’s the two tenths plus the gap with the car in front of you.
“That, for Charles, was a lot I think, but at the end of the day, the conclusion of this is not – because it’s true for us, but it’s true for Norris – is that if we lost something it was yesterday, not today. Today, we started behind Norris, we finished behind Norris. It is like it is. It’s more yesterday, I think, that we had the car. The driver was able to fight for P1, all the free practice, and we finished P10 and P12.”
Team orders, didn’t swap back –
Hamilton: “Obviously I was quicker but Charles was gracious to let me by. At the end, I got the message really late on and I was zoned in on the car in front of me. Even though there was like, 0.001 per cent chance of passing, I was still hopeful. I did lift on the straight and did actually brake, but missed it by like four-tenths. That was just a misjudgement from myself. I’ll apologise to Charles, but at the end of the day, it’s eighth and ninth. But it won’t happen again. There was never a thought that we were going to be in that position. So we didn’t talk about it.”
Leclerc: “No, I think it was clear. I really didn’t care much, it was for eighth place at the end. I don’t think that should be the talking point, unfortunately we have been slow all weekend and that’s where we should focus on…P8 or P9 or P9 or P8 is not something that really interests me, so it is fine. There are rules that we know we’ve got to work with and today maybe those rules were not respected. Again, I mean, P8 or P9… I don’t really care. It is more going forward, obviously, if we are fighting for sexier positions, which I hope will be the case, then I hope that we will work in a different way. But on a day like that, I don’t really mind.”
Vasseur: “I think it was a bit of a…with the tyres…some confusion, no. I think the situation was clear for us, that Lewis had a tyre advantage. And we asked Charles to let him go to try to overtake Norris? On the top, Charles had the issue with the recovery, and we are not at the top on the engine. I think that it was, I think, the best option for us to do this move. We asked to swap back, and it looks like Lewis had a misjudgment on the position of the start and finish line.”
Confidence lack in Baku –
Hamilton: “They [first stint passes] were okay, but still some improvements to make in terms of how aggressive I can be. The car has been quite snappy, so still not 100% confident under braking when I am attacking on the brakes, on the last race I was but this race, I didn’t feel so much with the set-up we had. As I said, we need to improve.”
Power unit issue –
Leclerc: “I hope so, unfortunately, I had a quite big power unit issue for like 10 laps in the first stint, and we don’t really know what is the reason for that yet because it kind of came back from one lap to the other and we don’t know what happened. So I need more info about that. It’s not like it’s been there for the whole race, so then I was fine towards the end, but in the phase where I think we probably had the chance to actually overtake cars, I was just stuck in the DRS and very slow down the straight, so I couldn’t do much in that first phase after that.
“The second part of the race I had full power and it still wasn’t enough to get past. It was a very frustrating race, again, what I should be harsh on myself is for yesterday and today is kind of result for my mistake in Q3 in qualifying. The race was very frustrating, it was frustrating for a reason and I shouldn’t do mistake like I did in Q3. Not really, again, with our car it was very difficult to have the tyres in the right window, I had to do that.”
Drop from Friday to Sunday –
Vasseur: “Tyres, I think it’s…Honestly, I don’t know. And I’m not sure that one of my colleagues knows exactly the good answer to this. I had the feeling that Friday it was a clear cut for everybody, that the medium was faster. And with the condition yesterday, I think during the session everybody moved to the soft. And probably that the soft was faster, but it’s probably because nobody did a proper test, probably that the medium was faster, but not lap one. On Friday, it was already a little bit like this. You need to build up the pace. In quali, you have one lap. It’s why also Sainz did very well, because he did it with scrub, and he was able to build up, I think it was the scrub of the end of Q2.
“He used it when Charles crashed. Yeah, and then another. Yeah, but honestly, it’s not a matter of potential. I think we did our best Friday from all Fridays of the season. From Friday, because we know exactly the conditions where we are operating the car. And we were in very good shape on the consistent…Not on the long run things, because we did four laps, but we were very consistent. On one lap pace that we were there, with the two cars, it was a very, very good Friday. Then the conditions changed. Clearly, today you have, I think, two groups. The McLaren and us, better when it’s a bit hotter. And the Mercedes and the Red Bull, a bit better when it’s colder. If I had to do it again, I’m not sure that I would do it completely different.”
Here’s pass from Charles Leclerc on Lando Norris: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-azerbaijan-grand-prix-leclerc-gets-the-jump-on-norris-for-p8-on-the-safety-car-restart.1843874558214650928
Here’s how F1 Azerbaijan GP panned out