Ferrari
Charles Leclerc
"We lost the victory based on two factors today. The first was tyre management on our out-lap from the pits. We expected it to take a long time for everyone to warm up their tyres, which was the case for our car, but not at all for McLaren, who got their tyres up to temperature immediately and gained a big amount of time there.The second was not fighting Oscar harder when he overtook. I knew we had a long race ahead and my target was to look after my tyres, stay within DRS range and overtake him later down the line. However, we underestimated the speed they had on the straights today, running a lower downforce package than us, which made them too fast to attempt to overtake them.Overall, it wasn’t the best day for our team, but we now head to Singapore and will come back stronger."
Carlos Sainz
"It's a real shame, the important thing is that both Checo (Perez) and I are ok after the crash but it’s obviously frustrating. I stayed on the normal racing line and didn’t do anything strange, the same as every other lap, so I didn’t expect the contact on my rear tyre. It’s part of racing but it hurts and we lost a lot of points today.I was having a very good race and was very quick. I think P3 or even P2 would’ve been possible, but it is what it is. Time to turn the page and focus on Singapore."
Frederic Vasseur, team principal
"The first part of the race went very well for Charles and his pace was mega. Then we need to analyze the laps immediately after his pit stop as the pace proved to be too slow and in the end he had no tyres left anyway. Probably we were a bit too conservative at the start of the second stint but having to drive in dirty air was difficult for Charles and the result was it damaged the tyres. We will review everything carefully.As for the incident with Carlos and Checo (Perez), they were side by side at the start of the straight leading to turn 3 and they both wanted to keep in Charles’ slipstream. It seems to me that Checo had plenty of space on his left hand side and did not move at all, while Carlos had no room on his right hand side. We leave Baku with a result below expectations but it was good to see that as in Monza we were fighting with McLaren and we were competitive. We need to keep the focus and continue to fight as there here are many more races to go."
