Leclerc baffled by time lost to Piastri between Baku pit stops

Charles Leclerc has urged Ferrari to investigate why his comfortable lead over future race winner Oscar Piastri in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix had dramatically shrunk by the time the pair had completed their respective pitstops.

Over the course of the first fifteen laps, Leclerc – who started from pole – had built a commanding six-second cushion over his McLaren rival.

But after completing his tyre swap on lap 17 – one lap after Piastri – the Scuderia charger’s advantage had shrunk to a measly 1.5 seconds.

Thereafter, it only took three laps for the Aussie to engage with the Ferrari, and on lap 21, a bold lunge up the inside of Leclerc at Turn 1 handed the lead to the McLaren driver.

In hindsight, Leclerc was mystified by how quickly his gap had evaporated, especially as Ferrari’s strategists had not anticipated such a powerful undercut.

• Read also: F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2024 Azerbaijan GP

“We expected the undercut today to be a very difficult thing to do, because we thought that the warm-up on the Hard would be extremely difficult,” the Monegasque explained.

“I don’t really have the explanation yet because I haven’t gone into details.

“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.”

Leclerc was particularly baffled by the size of the time loss, which he described as abnormal, even on a track where an undercut can be powerful.

“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,” he added.

“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.”

Reflecting on the race, Leclerc conceded that Ferrari should have been more proactive with their pit strategy.

He believed that pitting “one lap earlier” could have prevented Piastri from getting so close and applying pressure during the tyre warm-up phase.

"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 tyres on a track like this. It’s never the position you want to be in."

While Leclerc was clearly disappointed, he praised Piastri and McLaren for executing a superior strategy.

“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.”

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