Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc talk about the show they put on in F1 Azerbaijan GP, as Andrea Stella and Frederic Vasseur add on.
When Ferrari’s Leclerc had a gap of about five seconds in the first stint of F1 Azerbaijan GP, it looked like that was game set and match for the Monegasque. But the tables turned and how so. The hard tyre stint didn’t start off well which allowed McLaren’s Piastri to close in.
He made a bold move at Turn 1, braked late and overtook Leclerc for the lead of F1 Azerbaijan GP. From then on, it was no looking back. Despite attempts from the Monegasque, Piastri never gave him space to try and take the inside line.
On the outside, it was never going to be easy and for more than 30 laps, Leclerc tried and tried until the penultimate lap when his tyres dropped off massively. He came in the clutches of Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
Their collision kind of saved Leclerc, who went from a winning position to defending. The Monegasque and team boss Vasseur conceded that they should have pitted one lap before and should have been a bit more aggressive on the in-lap and out-lap.
That’s where they lost out to Piastri, who did surprise everyone. The Australian revealed that his engineer told him not to brake that late at Turn 1 but he disobeyed him and did it again, luckily for him, it worked and he was able to pass which defined the grand prix.
There was praise from Stella, who also credited 50% of win to Lando Norris. The Brit held crucially held up Perez at the end of the first stint, which allowed Piastri to come out ahead of the Mexican. In that sequence, the Australian hurried Leclerc to pass him.
Race overall –
Piastri: “For me, I think that ranks as probably the best win of my career, I would say. Trying to soak up that pressure for so long in that race that was incredibly tough. In the first stint, when Charles was just pulling away pretty comfortably, I thought we were going to be second at best. Even, you know, Checo was keeping me very honest and I could see Carlos was very quick at the end of the medium stint. I saw an opportunity or half an opportunity after the pit stop and knew I had to try and take it. I knew that getting to the lead was going to be one thing, but I knew I had my work cut out for me after that to try and stay there because I didn’t feel like we were the quickest in that first stint. It was very hard work. You know, I think having clean air did help quite a bit. But yeah, I think for me has to be one of the best races I’ve done. It’s [overtake] what won me the race.
“I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer because I basically tried to do that in the first stint and completely cooked my tyres. So my engineer came on the radio and said, ‘let’s not do that again’, basically. And I completely ignored him the next lap and sent it down the inside. I think at that point, you know, I felt like trying to stay back and wait for Charles to deg was never going to happen. I thought we was just going to secure us P2. So, yeah, you know, I had a similar opportunity in the first stint. I felt like on lap two or three, I was, I think, just within DRS, but didn’t fully capitalise on that opportunity. And I got to the end of the straight thinking ‘if I had have done a couple of things a bit differently here, I maybe had a chance’. So when I had a similar opportunity after the pit stop, I had to take it. And yeah, I wouldn’t be sat here without that.”
Leclerc: “It’s been a pretty frustrating race. We ran two different configurations. Obviously, they had, I think, a lower downforce package. We had a bit more downforce, which made us quite quick in the castle section. However, in all the straights they were flying. And that’s probably where I lost the race. I misjudged that. And when Oscar overtook me into Turn 1, I was not too worried. I just wanted to stay within the DRS, keep my tyres, and attempt an overtake later on. However, this opportunity never really arose again, just because we were too slow in the straights. Yeah, that was a small misjudgement, which had a big consequence. So sometimes it hurts, and it does today. But it’s the way it is. On the other hand, it’s been a pretty good last couple of races in terms of performance.
“This weekend hasn’t been great, because obviously we’ve got Carlos that was in a good position that didn’t manage to finish the race. But within the team, we are in a good position in a good mood and we need to keep pushing in that direction. When I switched to hard, I straight away started to struggle. As soon as I got out of the box on the Hard, we just didn’t manage to find the grip that McLaren had on those tyres. And then again, when Oscar overtook me, I was quite calm in the car. And I just was focusing on my tyre management, which I did. And after 10, 15 laps, I thought that everything was coming together and that maybe towards the end, we will be in a better place. But with the dirty air, I think for 20, 25 laps towards the end, my tyres were completely gone. And again, they were just too quick in the straights for me to attempt anything.”
Stella: “I think, at this event, there wasn’t much difference at all between Ferrari, McLaren, and Red Bull. If anything, Red Bull struggled to get the most out of their packaging in qualifying but, in the race, I think we saw that everyone was basically within the same tenth of a second. Whoever had the lead and the clean air could control the race because, even if there’s such a long straight, there are also so many corners that you can open up a gap like seven, eight-tenths, and then you can control the race. I think Oscar just took advantage that his hard tyres were in a really sweet spot when Leclerc pitted ahead of him, and he just seemed to have an edge to be able to attack him in Turn 1. But, if we look where Oscar is coming from when he attacks Leclerc in Turn 1, that’s from quite afar, and he still negotiated the apex. I think it’s one of those cases in which you have to point out the ability of the driver, because he delayed the braking point so much and still negotiated Turn 1 in such a precise way – he doesn’t even have to rely on Leclerc conceding any space. So it’s one of those cases in which just the talent, the precision in the execution, from Oscar’s point of view, just made a difference. I think from a car point of view and the tyres, I think today was everything very, very close between these three teams at least.”
Overtake –
Piastri: “It was the only thing I had. If I didn’t take that opportunity then I was never going to have another one I think. I mean credit to Charles. He was incredibly fair. I think maybe he thought I was going to sail on into the run-off but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually made the corner. It was a high-risk, high-commitment move but that’s what I needed to do to try and win the race because, you know, I wasn’t really going to be that keen to finish second. So I had to try.”
Leclerc: “Not really by surprise, because he wasn’t completely straight behind me. He was a little bit on the left. So I could see in my mirrors that he was there and that it was a possibility for him to go there. But again, I couldn’t really be super aggressive. I still had cold tyres. I was really struggling to put those tyres into temperature. I just thought it wasn’t that much of a big deal if he would overtake me at that point of the race because the race was still long and the DRS would help me to stay within a second of him and then once my tyres will be in temperature I could overtake him again. But as I said, that was a misjudgement from my side.”
Stella: “When I watched it live and I saw him going [for it], my instinct said, ‘He’s gonna go long’. The delay in the braking point was like… if Leclerc braked there, that must be the braking point… and [Oscar] is delaying. So my instinct was, ‘He’s gonna go long’, but that’s why I want to emphasise in my answer just the precision in the execution to then actually be on the inside apex kerb in Turn 1. So yeah, I was surprised. But Oscar is always surprising us with his talent, with his ability, and I would say today he gave also a demonstration of his mental strength. He drove like a driver who has a lot of experience and has been under this kind of pressure before – who can look with one eye at the mirror and the other eye on the braking point. Oscar did it again with a great level of precision and pretty controlled, even when he was talking on the radio, he seemed very, very much under control. Phenomenal driver, a brilliant drive.”
Defence game –
Piastri: “I think for me to be honest the key was actually hanging on in Sector 2. I felt like as long as I could keep the lead into Turn 1 then I felt like I could keep Charles. Turn 2, I think, is a very, very slippery corner for some reason this weekend. and if you could get good enough drive out of there… You know, the straight is not quite long enough to have DRS really make an impact to catch back up. For me, just taking a lot of risk through the castle section is what I was trying to do because I needed to try and make the gap from Turn 7 through the rest of the lap. And yeah, I had a couple of close calls through the castle and Turn 15 as well. I think the guys probably need to put another rear corner on my car after the race. But yeah, that was where I was really trying to be fast and obviously get a good exit out of the last corner. On that note, I think we both need to get a photo of us drifting through the last corner. I was speaking to Mark, and he said it’s like 1950s F1. So yeah, that was a cool moment to watch back. It didn’t feel very fun at the time for both of us, I’m sure. But yeah, just trying to maximize the pace through the end of Sector 2 really was where I was trying to make it work.”
Stress –
Piastri: “I think for me, once I got into the lead, which was about two-thirds of the race. Yeah, I knew that getting into the lead was going to be, let’s say 40% of the job, but I knew that hanging on to it was going to be 60%. And, you know, I knew that I’d use the tyres pretty heavily to try and get in front, and I knew what kind of impact that had in the first stint, and I was kind of just hoping that the clean air was going to help me stay ahead. And it probably did a little bit, but then obviously you lose a lot of time with DRS, so I think for me, just trying to keep Charles behind was incredibly stressful. You know, I couldn’t make a single mistake. I made a couple, but at a track like Baku, it’s impossible to be driving flat out and not make any. You know, I was just fortunate that they weren’t big enough that it cost me. So, yeah, just the whole 30 laps where I was trying to keep Charles behind was incredibly tough.”
Where lost, Plan C strategy –
Leclerc: “I think today we’ve lost the race based on two misjudgements. Obviously the first one I explained earlier and the fact of not fighting Oscar more was a mistake from my side because then with the different configurations we were struggling to actually overtake back in the straight. The second one is exactly this. We expected the undercut today to be a very difficult thing to do, just because we thought that the warm-up on the Hard would be extremely difficult for some reason. I don’t really have the explanation yet because I haven’t gone into details. I just jumped out of the car, but we’ve got to look into how the gap went from six seconds to one and a half, because that is definitely not what we expected. And that is a lot. Even on a track where undercuts are big, it’s still four seconds and a half or four seconds – a lot of lap time loss, which I don’t exactly know why and where we’ve lost this lap time. So this will be an analysis.
“But when we speak about that amount of lap time, I think it will be straightforward. And we’ll see very quickly whether they just had a much better warm up with the hard than us or whether we’ve lost it anywhere else. I think we should have stopped a lap earlier. I think that’s it, to try and keep the gap to Oscar behind and to not have that pressure when you warm up the tires on a track like this. It’s never the position you want to be in. But again, it’s always very easy to change things after the race. And today, Oscar and McLaren have done a better job than me and Ferrari. And they deserve to win. Regarding strategy, I won’t go into details of exactly what this plan was, but it wasn’t stupid. That’s the only thing I can say, really. But yeah, we didn’t go for it. But I’ve already said enough for you to understand what that means. So it was a different plan than what we’ve done. And it wasn’t stupid, but that’s it.”
Vasseur: “I think we lost little bit probably on the in-lap, we can consider that it would have been better to pit one lap before but it is long story. We changed the plan to make the gap and to pit the lap after. We were a bit shy on the out lap, clearly the out lap we lost the most compared to Piastri and he caught us. But we were convinced that for the last stint of about 38 laps that we have to do a slow run than to push too much on the out lap. When you are behind someone, you are spending 30 laps in the dirty air, you are managing the tyres a lot, probably we had a better pace than Piastri but then it is what it is. It was the opposite early on but track position is important. Then when you spend 20 laps behind someone, you are pushing on the rear to try to overtake and the front is in the dirty air, you are sliding a bit more and after 25 laps, you are starting to degrade more than the guy in front of you. I think it is what happened in the first stint with Oscar who was behind us, he spent the first 10 laps behind us and then had a massive gap.”
Norris’ help –
Stella: “That message was because of Perez because Perez was undercutting effectively and without Lando’s help, Perez would have pitted ahead of Oscar and the race would have unfolded in a completely different way. So, I think 50% of Oscar’s victory is shared with Lando, just shows that we are approaching racing as one team. We had conversations before the weekend where we would be bias one way or the other but for us, we approach every weekend trying to maximise result for the team. And if one driver needs help, we will do it. And the other driver will do it. That’s the point of strength for us when you compete within such a tight competition. I think apart from the overtaking that Oscar was able to do on Leclerc, whoever was in the lead could have won the race because it was much much easier on the tyres, to be in the lead than following. We saw Leclerc finished the tyres and you finish the tyres because you need to ask the tyres what you are going to lose from an aerodynamic point of view when you are one second behind for so many laps.”
Here’s the move from Oscar Piastri: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-azerbaijan-grand-prix-piastri-takes-the-lead-after-mega-move-on-leclerc.1810264914087848926
Here’s Carlos Sainz, Frederic Vasseur on the collision
Here’s how F1 Azerbaijan GP panned out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact
