Why Leclerc could be only three laps short of a Baku F1 upset

A street circuit defined by its high speeds and a huge flat-out sprint that comes to dominate the second half of the lap. That’s surely Red Bull territory in 2022, based on the Formula 1 race-winning form the team displayed in Jeddah and then Miami.

Thanks to the might of the rebadged Honda power unit during the first third of the season, Red Bull has had the measure of chief championship rival Ferrari in the top speed stakes. No surprise then the RB18 was unloaded in Baku as the favourite for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

But after two hours of 200mph+ running on Friday, what does come as a surprise is that the case for Red Bull retaining the shortest odds for success is largely based on just three laps of evidence. That’s down to Ferrari massively upping its straight-line game.

Yet that didn’t look to be the case after first practice. A rather gusty opening gambit around the 3.7 miles of coastal city roads ended with Sergio Perez on top. The Monaco victor, now backed by a freshly inked contract extension, continued his good form to set the early pace with a 1m45.476s effort. That gave him a 0.127s cushion over Ferrari lead charger Charles Leclerc, while team-mate Verstappen was third and 0.334s off the pace.

Although the Ferrari F1-75 was the star performer through the opening two sectors in FP1 - at times by up to eight tenths - it was suffering considerably on the long dash to the line to ultimately fall behind. The speed trap clocked Perez and Verstappen as equals at 207.5mph, while Leclerc was ‘only’ nudging 200mph.

Certainly, there was little to suggest that Ferrari would be exceeding the pre-weekend expectation for effective damage limitation at Baku. Red Bull would remain on course to snare a fifth consecutive win after the powertrain failure for Leclerc while he was leading comfortably in Spain and then Ferrari’s strategy stress that squandered a likely 1-2 in Monaco last time out.

Verstappen came into the Baku F1 weekend as favourite to win

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

However, then the red cars emerged in second practice sporting a different specification rear wing. That came as part of a circuit-specific upgrade to fit the “depowered” top element as first seen in Miami - with revised wing mirrors to clean up airflow also debuting. The belated switch to a low-drag configuration and any further set-up tweaks plus changes to engine modes paid dividends.

In pursuit of his sixth pole position of the term, Leclerc’s qualifying simulation was peerless. He topped the FP2 headline times courtesy of a 1m43.224s that put him 0.248s ahead of Perez, while Verstappen again slotted into third and with 0.356s to find. Tellingly, Leclerc was now hitting a Vmax of 208mph as the RB18s remained at 207.5mph. Better still, Ferrari hadn’t lost out with its changes through the more twisty first two sectors.

Overall FP2 order

And Leclerc potentially still had more to offer. Some fairly violent porpoising, although not in the same league as the bouncing Mercedes and Alpine machines, meant the Ferrari floor was kissing the asphalt to hamper straightline speed. He also left a little on the table, with Leclerc informed over team radio that he was down on stablemate Carlos Sainz through Turns 7 and 12. The Monegasque was offered another flying lap to stitch together a perfect run but instead opted to switch to high fuel running.

What comes as a surprise is that the case for Red Bull retaining the shortest odds for success is largely based on just three laps of evidence

For all of Leclerc’s headline performance over one lap on the softest-available C5 tyre, his race-simulating long-run pace on the red-walled Pirellis would prove to be less inspiring. But not by much.

After the teams switched focus from Saturday to Sunday running for the final 25 minutes of FP2, Leclerc was sent out on a used set of soft tyres. He turned in six representative laps while in high fuel trim and his average time was 1m47.779s.

The latest DRS-based irritation to afflict Verstappen, the flap vibrating excessively to force a last-minute spec change for FP2, meant 15 minutes had passed before he left the garage. From there, he ran out of sync with the field.

Mechanics at work in the Red Bull garage fixing Verstappen's DRS

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

As such, his run plan was truncated as he too emerged on a scrubbed set of softs - albeit one lap younger than Leclerc’s boots. Over the course of what would only be three usable laps, his average was 1m47.457s as per Autosport’s calculations. He therefore ran a not un-noteworthy three tenths faster than his Ferrari challenger, but with half the sample size to underline his and Red Bull’s status as the pre-race favourites.

While that data set is too small to draw definitive conclusions from, it might be safer to suggest that Azerbaijan GP could give way to a frenetic multi-car fight for the spoils, especially if Ferrari retains its one-lap showing to snare a pole.

That’s based on the comparison between Perez and Sainz, even if they did split from their respective team-mates. The Mexican and Spaniard were instead put on medium tyres for their race simulations.

Sainz chalked six representative laps. On a scrubbed set of the C4 compound, he posted an average lap of 1m48.091s. Autosport’s sums have Perez’s same length stint at a near identical 1m47.995s. Much like their team-mates, the Ferrari ran with tyres just one lap older than the Red Bull rubber.

Pirelli estimates that there is a six-tenth offset between compounds. In other words, take that as gospel and deduct it from Perez and Sainz’s evening efforts and they could join Verstappen very neatly in the 1m47.4s.

Sainz had been much less of a factor in the qualifying simulations in FP2 as he ranked fifth, behind Fernando Alonso’s Alpine, which was handily towed along by Lewis Hamilton. But his true pace was masked. Sainz, despite posting the fastest second sector of the day, had to abort his second flying lap owing to traffic. He was further hindered by yellow flags, caused by Perez running down an escape road at Turn 15. That also incidentally forced Verstappen to bin off a potentially quicker lap.

Sainz has generally been behind Leclerc through practice in Azerbaijan

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

As Leclerc said: "We've had a good Friday because overall I think we've improved quite a lot from FP1 to FP2, but there's still another step that we need to do from today to tomorrow. I also feel in FP2 nobody really put a lap in and neither did we, I think Max and Carlos didn't actually improve on the soft so yeah, there are still quite a lot of question marks. I think the positive to take away from today is that I the tyre degradation was good, and the race pace was very strong. So that is good."

Leclerc did endure a late session scare in the wake of his Spanish GP retirement. He reported a power loss but would later reveal: "Actually, it was no power unit problems. It's just me that forgot that I had changed something, which obviously made me lose power.”

He and both Red Bull drivers also familiarised themselves with the escape roads around Baku, with Perez and Verstappen aborting corners when the front-end washed wide on colder tyres - the ground-effect RB18s has a bias towards understeer anyway. Leclerc faced temperature issues of his own, needing to lift and coast to manage the overheating brakes.

"I think we've improved quite a lot from FP1 to FP2, but there's still another step that we need to do [from Friday to Saturday]" Charles Leclerc

Verstappen’s assessment of the prospective fight was: “Overall it was not a bad day, we look quite decent, we just need to fine tune a few things. I was a bit unlucky with my soft tyre runs in FP1 and FP2, there were a few yellow flags, so I had to back out.

“It seems like Ferrari is quite quick over one lap again, the long runs look a bit more even so that’s positive. The tyres seem to be working well after one lap, which is good for a street circuit. We tried to fix the DRS after FP1, it seemed to be alright in FP2.

“My long runs went well; I did a grand total of three laps!” he joked. And a good three laps they were, the best of the entire field. But still not enough to definitively suggest that Red Bull will emphatically convert its status as favourites to blow Ferrari away in the so-called ‘City of Winds’.

Can Leclerc reverse Ferrari's fortunes?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images