Oscar Piastri put in a phenomenal drive to win for the second time in his career with victory at the 2024 Azerbaijan GP, after pulling off a sensational overtake on Charles Leclerc at the start of the second stint – and admitted he had to “ignore” his team’s instructions about saving tyres in order to get ahead of the Ferrari.
The Australian maintained second place off the start and closely followed Leclerc in the opening few laps, before he severely dropped back as he struggled with thermal degradation on his medium tyres, allowing the Monegasque to have as much as six seconds of clearance before the McLaren pitted.
But it all changed after the stops, as Piastri pulled off some a very fast out lap to get close to Leclerc, closing the gap by over three seconds with a well timed undercut, before he continued pushing to get into DRS range of the Ferrari and managing that stunning overtake down the inside of the first corner.
Speaking after the race, the now two-time grand prix winner revealed that he had to “ignore” instructions from his race engineer Tom Stallard, who asked him to bring the tyres into the race in a gentle manner, and admitted he just pushed “flat out” to get ahead, as he knew it was probably his best opportunity of the day:
“I don’t necessarily think we were the fastest car on track today. If you look at Charles’ first stint, he was driving away pretty comfortably, and I don’t think I was the quickest car on track in the second stint either – we had just enough in the right places to keep him behind.
“There’s still some things to work on, I think today the lack of pace was just because I had to push flat out to get into the lead, and obviously when you do that, your tyres are pretty fried and them trying to keep that pace to stay ahead, it’s never great for the tyres.
“[But] it’s what won me the race. I felt a bit sorry for my race engineer, because I basically tried to do that 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.
“I think at that point, you know, I felt like trying to stay back and wait for Charles to deg was never going to happen. I thought we was just going to secure us P2. So, yeah, you know, I had a similar opportunity in the first stint. I felt like on lap two or three, I was, I think, 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 yeah, I wouldn’t be sat here [in P1] without that.”
The McLaren driver explained the key to his race was timing the overtake just right, as well as managing to build a buffer through the second sector, which meant Leclerc was rarely in position to put a solid attack on as the pair raced towards the first turn of the race track:
“If I didn’t take that opportunity then I was never going to have another one,” said Piastri. “I mean 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, you know, I wasn’t really going to be that keen to finish second. So I had to try.”
“I think for me to be honest the key was actually hanging on in Sector 2. I felt like as long as I could keep the lead into Turn 1 then I felt like I could keep Charles. Turn 2, I think, is a very, very slippery corner for some reason this weekend. and if you could get good enough drive out of there… You know, the straight is not quite long enough to have DRS really make an impact to catch back up.
“For me, just taking a lot of risk through the castle section is what I was trying to do because I needed to try and make the gap from Turn 7 through the rest of the lap. And yeah, I had a couple of close calls through the castle and Turn 15 as well. I think the guys probably need to put another rear corner on my car after the race. But yeah, that was where I was really trying to be fast and obviously get a good exit out of the last corner.”
One notable moment was when broadcast replays showed both Piastri and Leclerc sliding the rear out of the turn 16, as the pair desperately tried to fend off each other and get the best possible exit towards the two kilometres straight, with the Australian recalling the moment as “not very fun” from the cockpit, but admitting it will make for a good photo:
“On that note, I think we both need to get a photo of us drifting through the last corner. I was speaking to Mark [Webber, former F1 driver and his manager], and he said it’s like 1950s F1. So yeah, that was a cool moment to watch back. It didn’t feel very fun at the time for both of us, I’m sure. But yeah, just trying to maximize the pace through the end of Sector 2 really was where I was trying to make it work.”
Reflecting on the significance of what is his second race win in F1, after winning in Hungary earlier this season in slightly strange and controversial circumstances, Piastri called this “one of my best drives” and believes it will go down as a special moment when he looks back in his career – and pointed out how he felt an improvement in his racecraft during the European leg of the 2024 season that has proved significant in Baku:
“I was very happy with this afternoon. I think that definitely goes down as one of the best races in my career,” he said. “After the first stint, I thought we were going to be second at the absolute best, but after the pit stop I saw we managed to gain a fair bit of time [relative to Leclerc] somehow.
“For the first lap or two of the first stint, I kind of had half an opportunity [to get ahead], but didn’t quite get close enough.
“So I knew when I was in DRS in that one lap, I knew I had to try everything to make it stick, because if I didn’t, I definitely wasn’t going to win the race, so I knew I had to go for it.
“Once I’ve pulled [the overtake] off, I thought ‘ok, let’s get a bit of a gap with clean air’. But I just couldn’t break DRS [range].
“To hang on for so long, with very, very few mistakes, is definitely one of my best drives.
“Through the European part of the season, I think I’ve started to finally crack the races a little bit more. At the start of the year we’ve made some good progress from last year, but I think I found another step through Europe.”
