Vasseur frustrated after Leclerc displayed ‘mega’ pace in Baku

Despite having displayed dominant qualifying and race pace in Baku, Charles Leclerc lost another opportunity to win the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Ferrari’s team boss Fred Vasseur was understandably disheartened after the race, and stressed that the Scuderia need to clear several questions regarding its tyre management on the hard compound.

Having dominated the opening stages of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc lost out to McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who took his second victory of his F1 career.

The Monegasque took his fourth consecutive pole position in Baku on Saturday with a dominant lap, having been the quickest in Azerbaijan in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Despite building up an advantage of over six seconds on the medium tyres, Leclerc lost the lead after the first round of pit stops, and was unable to retake it despite a series of overtaking manoeuvres.

Speaking of the race, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur said that the Scuderia will need to find out what has caused the issues during the hard-tyre stint after Leclerc dominated the opening stages of the race on the mediums.

“The first part of the race went very well for Charles and his pace was mega. Then we need to analyse 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.

Having closed in on the leading trio in the dying stages of the 51-lap Baku race, Carlos Sainz was desperate to get onto the podium. With Sergio Perez having battled with Charles Leclerc for the second spot, Sainz managed to overtake the Mexican. However, just moments later, when the Spaniard tussled with his team-mate, Perez managed to fight back and pull alongside Sainz.

The Mexican and the Spaniard collected one another on the run down to Turn 3, with both smashing into the barrier and missing out on respective big points hauls.

The incident was investigated by the race stewards, but the they deemed the crash to be a racing incident, stating that neither Sainz nor Perez were predominantly at fault, and therefore they have taken no further action.

Elaborating on the huge accident between Sainz and Perez, Vasseur said that Perez could have left more room to the Spaniard.

“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 are many more races to go.”