Leclerc Secures Second Despite Early Race Lead

Vasseur reflects on Ferrari’s near-win and Leclerc’s strong start, emphasizing lessons from their errors.

Fred Vasseur offered a somewhat frustrated assessment of Ferrari’s day at Baku, securing second place for Charles Leclerc and a retirement for Carlos Sainz following a significant collision with Sergio Pérez. The Scuderia director first provided an update on the Spaniard.

“Firstly, he is fine, I saw him and he is okay, which is the most important thing. He started the straight between turns 2 and 3 in Charles’ slipstream. They were both seeking Charles’ slipstream and almost made contact before. It appears that Checo had room and Carlos did not against the wall,” Vasseur stated shortly after the race, before discussing the rest of the event.

“I think the pace was there; we lacked performance in the lap before coming in and the lap after exiting. We can review the race and wonder if we should have stopped earlier, but that’s nonsense. We just need to learn from these mistakes, although it’s true that the lack of long runs didn’t help.”

“But it’s a second place, it’s a good result for Charles in the championship. But we are a bit frustrated because it wasn’t the Sunday we hoped for, and we had the pace to win, and it was possible this weekend.”

He detailed why Leclerc’s tyres fell off towards the end of the race: “We were probably a bit too conservative at the start of the second stint, but running in dirty air was difficult for Charles and it damaged the tyres. We will review everything carefully.”

Asked by Canal+ about his takeaways from the weekend, the Frenchman tried to remain optimistic: “We need to take the positives from the weekend, we were always at the front, we fought with the McLarens, with the Mercedes, and with Max. There are seven races left and we must focus on that.”

He explained that it was not during the stop itself that Leclerc lost the bulk of his lead over Piastri: “The stop was good but we lost a second and a half on the in-lap, and a second and a half on the out-lap. We put ourselves in danger and Piastri was able to take advantage.”