Piastri ignored his race engineer to pull off race-winning pass on Leclerc · RaceFans

Oscar Piastri revealed he disregarded an instruction from his race engineer to pull off the overtaking move which won him the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver surprised Charles Leclerc by diving down the inside of the Ferrari driver to take the lead on the 20th lap of the race.

Piastri said his race engineer Tom Stallard urged him to treat his tyres gently at the beginning of both stints, but ignored him both times, and on the second occasion pulled off the pass which got him into the lead. Getting into clean air at that stage “won me the race,” said Leclerc.

“I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer because I basically tried to do that [pass] in the first stint and completely cooked my tyres. So my engineer came on the radio and said, ‘let’s not do that again’, basically. And I completely ignored him the next lap and sent it down the inside.

“At that point, I felt [that] trying to stay back and wait for Charles to deg[rade his tyres] was never going to happen. I thought we was just going to secure us P2.

“I had a similar opportunity in the first stint. I felt like on lap two or three, I was just within DRS, but didn’t fully capitalise on that opportunity. And I got to the end of the straight thinking ‘if I had have done a couple of things a bit differently here, I maybe had a chance’.

“So when I had a similar opportunity after the pit stop, I had to take it. And I wouldn’t be sat here without that.”

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The McLaren driver doubts he would have had another opportunity to pass Leclerc if he hadn’t got by at that point.

“It was the only thing I had. If I didn’t take that opportunity then I was never going to have another one I think.

“Credit to Charles, he was incredibly fair. I think maybe he thought I was going to sail on into the run-off but I was pleasantly surprised that I actually made the corner.

“It was a high-risk, high-commitment move but that’s what I needed to do to try and win the race because I wasn’t really going to be that keen to finish second. So I had to try.”

Leclerc said he didn’t defend his position more aggressively because he was trying to look after his tyres at the beginning of his stint.

“I could see in my mirrors that he was there and that it was a possibility for him to go there. But I couldn’t really be super-aggressive. I still had cold tyres. I was really struggling to put those tyres [up] to temperature.

“I just thought it wasn’t that much of a big deal if he would overtake me at that point of the race because the race was still long and the DRS would help me to stay within a second of him and then once my tyres will be in temperature I could overtake him again. But as I said, that was a misjudgement from my side.”

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