As David Croft had commented once, when Charles Leclerc hooks it up around Baku, he really does hook it up around Baku. After a hat trick of pole positions, the Monégasque conquered the street circuit of Baku once more with his blistering one-lap pace. His best lap time of 1:41.365 placed him 0.321 seconds ahead of Oscar Piastri in qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as he secured his third pole position of the season. With Max Verstappen and Lando Norris set to line up in sixth and sixteenth [after Gasly’s disqualification] on the grid, respectively, Ferrari will certainly hope to clinch back-to-back victories and bolster their position in the championship battles.
In the press conference, Leclerc spoke at length about his feeling in the car and how he approached the final segment of qualifying around the streets of Baku. He emphasised the importance of a good banker lap and added that it allowed him to push more during his final Q3 run. He also revealed that despite his crash in FP1 and limited running on Friday, the car has not undergone major setup changes since the balance has been fairly good from the get-go.
“Well, it was a good lap. I just took a little bit more risk compared to the first attempt in Q3. It was important to just have a lap on the board, and then in the second lap, you just take more risk and see what happens. Luckily, I finished both of the laps, and they were good laps.
“The car felt really good since FP1. Honestly, we barely changed the car from FP1 to now. Straight away, I felt happy and the balance remained really good. We had to counter a little bit the track evolution because there’s a lot of track evolution here, but the feeling was there straight away in FP1, even though there were not many laps in FP1 and FP2. That didn’t stop us to recover after that and to be at ease for all the weekend.”
On the topic of race pace and how confident Ferrari is about maintaining the winning streak, Leclerc appeared fairly optimistic about their chances. Despite the lack of running on high fuel, the 26-year-old underscored the superior race pace of the SF-24 and remarked that the team intends to optimise the package to its fullest tomorrow.
“I mean, I didn’t do a lap with high fuel, but it’s been a pretty strong point of the car this year. So I am not worried going into tomorrow’s race, but obviously we need to do things right. So I’ll have to do a bit of homework tonight in order to get ready for tomorrow, but I’m not too worried that we’ll do the best job with our package and then we’ll see whether it’s good enough to win the race tomorrow or not.”
With regard to the question of whether having two Ferraris near the front of the field would offer them a strategic advantage going into the race, Leclerc seemed rather content about their starting positions. He responded that he expects the odd side of the grid to provide them more grip at the start in comparison to Piastri. Furthermore, he disclosed that they hope to play the team game tomorrow to climb onto the top step of the podium.
“Let’s say it’s the best we could have hoped for. I mean normally the even side of the grid has a little bit less grip, so first and third is where you want to start and hopefully we can play a team game tomorrow to win that race. But it’s going to be a long race. In the past we were very strong in qualifying struggling a bit in the race. This year we have a stronger race car, so I hope that we can finally make it tomorrow.”
When asked whether he would rely on his excellent tyre management skills again to take him through to the end, Leclerc confessed that he anticipates tyre management to play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the race tomorrow. Despite their successful execution of the one-stop strategy at Monza, he revealed that the team has reset this weekend and that they intend to bank on their adaptability to tackle tyre degradation and other issues they encounter during the race.
“Oh, definitely. I mean, tyre management will be a big thing tomorrow as well. So we’ve got to do a good job. We’ve done a really good job in Monza. But yeah, as I said, we have to reset every race as we do. And that’s what we did.
“So tomorrow is another race with other issues, even though tyre degradation is there. It’s with different tyres. So you’ve got to adapt to that. And we’ll do our homework tonight to get ready for tomorrow.”
