Leclerc: "We lost the race in Baku due to two wrong decisions"

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has spoken about the tactical mistakes that cost him victory at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“Today we lost the race due to two wrong decisions. I’ve already mentioned the first one — not battling with Oscar. That was my mistake, as it was difficult for us to overtake on the straight due to our different setups.

Secondly, we anticipated that it would be challenging to execute an undercut today, simply because we believed it would be hard to get the hard tires warmed up. We need to figure out how my gap shrank from six seconds to one and a half seconds. That’s a significant loss.

I’m not exactly sure why and where we lost that time, so we need to analyze it. We should assess whether they managed to warm their hard tires quickly, or if we lost time somewhere else.

If we had pitted a lap earlier, I believe I would have maintained my lead over Oscar and wouldn’t have felt the pressure while warming up my tires. But, again, it’s always easy to suggest changes after the race. Today, Oscar and McLaren performed better than I did, as well as than Ferrari. They deserved the win,” Leclerc stated, as reported by Race Fans.

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was won by McLaren driver Oscar Piastri, with Leclerc finishing in second place.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez of Red Bull retired from the race following a collision on the penultimate lap.