Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc admitted he didn’t defend well enough against Oscar Piastri as he lost an Azerbaijan Grand Prix win to the McLaren driver following a scintillating duel.
Leclerc started on pole for the fourth consecutive time on the streets of Baku, but after the only pitstop sequence of the race, second-placed Piastri made an audacious lunge into Turn 1 on lap 20 to snatch the lead away from the Monegasque.
Leclerc stayed with the Australian for the remainder of the race and made several attempts to repass him into the same corner with the help of DRS, but as his hard tyres faded the Ferrari man had to settle for second instead.
Leclerc admitted he was surprised by Piastri’s late Turn 1 move and realised he should have tried to defend rather than return to the racing line early, thinking Piastri was surely too far back to try anything.
“To be honest, we lost the race where I didn’t quite defend as well as I should have at the end of the straight,” said Leclerc. “But it is the way it is. Sometimes you do mistakes, and I’ll learn from it.
“When Oscar overtook me, I was like: ‘Okay, now it’s just a matter of staying calm, trying to keep those tyres [alive] and overtake him again later on’.
“But actually, it was a lot more difficult than that and on the straights I couldn’t get as close as I wanted. I think maybe McLaren had a little bit less downforce, so on the straights they were very quick. In the corners we were a bit quicker.”
Leclerc initially thought Piastri was “crazy” for pushing as hard as he did on the second stint, with the Ferrari driver forced into abusing his hard tyres as well to keep up, which almost cost him second to Red Bull’s Sergio Perez at the end.
The Red Bull driver was involved in a collision with the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, though, on the penultimate lap, allowing Leclerc to finish second with badly worn tyres.
“We were very competitive, and the car felt good. Unfortunately, we didn’t do any high fuel running on my side in FP1, FP2, and we went for a set-up direction that maybe in the race was a bit more difficult to manage, especially on the hard tyres,” he added.
“I was really struggling to just keep those rear tyres [alive]. And towards the end I really thought that I would put it in the wall. It was very close.”
