Would Leclerc have won in Baku had his Ferrari survived?

When the engine nestled in the back of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari went up in smoke in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last weekend, so too did our chances of witnessing a potentially thrilling climax when he might have battled with rival Max Verstappen for the ultimate spoils.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said: “It's a shame it didn't play out, because I think we did have a very quick race car today. And I think with that eight- or nine-lap overlap with the drivers, that would have been a sufficient advantage to hopefully make a pass on [Leclerc].”

But were Horner and Verstappen, who made a similar claim, right to be so confident about catching? For Leclerc, helped largely by his team-mate Carlos Sainz stopping with a hydraulics failure to trigger a virtual safety car, was 13s to the good when disaster struck. What’s more, for the eight laps prior to his retirement, he’d been meritocratically up to 1.2s faster than his rival.

In the words of team principal Mattia Binotto, Ferrari were “very, very sharp” as Leclerc dived into the pitlane immediately as the VSC was deployed to gain a theoretically 10s cheaper stop under the speed restrictions to swap his medium Pirellis for a set of hards. While a front and rear jack delay contributed to a sluggish 5.4s service, at least “miscommunication” between Sergio Perez and his race engineer plus Verstappen staying out meant Red Bull did not cover off the Ferrari threat directly by pitting either driver.

Although polesitter Leclerc had earlier lost out at the start, with costly first-gear wheelspin blamed on a patch of soft asphalt melted in the sun, he would take back the lead when Red Bull finally pitted both cars. Helping his cause, Verstappen lost 0.5s swapping positions with Perez as the Mexican struggled on degrading mediums after allowing temperatures to drop too much under the VSC. And then in less advantageous green flag conditions, Verstappen took on his C3 hard tyres at the end of lap 18. A minor right-rear glitch prompted a better, if not great, 3.5s stop.

He then had those 13s to recover and would have relied on a combination of the RB18’s marginally superior Baku race pace and the virtues of nine-lap newer tyres to close. Only then, Leclerc’s chances went up in smoke to relieve the pressure on Verstappen and Red Bull.

PLUS: How Ferrari's latest implosion stitched up a plausible Baku upset

The first lap not included, it was Verstappen who had the legs on Leclerc for the opening stint on medium tyres. For the following seven laps that they ran on the same strategy and in identical conditions, the defending champion’s average lap time was a 1m48.636s. Leclerc was a touch adrift at 1m48.649s.

Verstappen was fractionally quicker than Leclerc in their opening stints, before the Ferrari's VSC stop gave him the edge

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The hard tyre proved the pick of the three compounds - best proved by the McLaren intra-team tussle, first with Daniel Ricciardo stuck behind Lando Norris and then vice versa. When Leclerc and Verstappen were on the white-walled rubber, the nine-lap offset robs this comparison of a direct head-to-head. Verstappen was running lighter with less fuel and on a more evolved track.

Nevertheless, Leclerc’s average time (out-lap and engine explosion not included) for his nine clean tours on the C3s was 1m48.164s. In that, he set the race’s early fastest lap courtesy of a 1m47.531s effort to build his gap over Verstappen. When the Dutch ace finally pitted, the opening representative nine laps of his stint on the same compound levelled out half a second quicker: 1m47.669s.

Verstappen likely could have lowered his times further. He dropped from the low 1m48s into the mid 1m47s to prompt race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to gently reminded his driver that even though everything may appear under control in Baku, disaster can strike. Verstappen knows that all too well from his blowout while leading last season.

Analysis: 10 things we learned at the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Rather than comply immediately, though, Verstappen negotiated a target delta quick enough to maintain tyre temperature. But there had been a compromise, nonetheless - by extension, he did not chalk the fastest lap of the race, which went to Perez. And after a second stop for hards, running with that somewhat checked pace, Verstappen would lap consistently in the high to mid 1m46s.

"We felt very strong, certainly in the lead with a strong tyre. And Charles very happy with the car behaviour" Mattia Binotto

Pirelli’s pre-race calculations had a one-stop strategy down as the optimum, but the elimination of both Ferrari’s afforded Red Bull the breathing space to pit again. Should that one-stop have played out, it would have allowed tyre degradation to factor in to a greater extent. But Binotto reckoned Leclerc might have had that covered. He said: “The tyre degradation on the hard what we saw was very little. So, if we could have made the hard survive, it would have been the right call.

“Obviously, we do not have the answer to that. We will get the numbers and I'm pretty sure everybody will have a look at it to have a forecast of how the race would have finished. But we felt very strong, certainly in the lead with a strong tyre. And Charles very happy with the car behaviour."

Based on the average laps, as per Horner and Verstappen’s claim, the lead RB18 would realistically have closed on Leclerc. There is the caveat that the Ferrari might have been afforded some breathing space, or slowed further, depending on how the pair negotiated lapped traffic. Similarly, as Verstappen closed, running in Leclerc’s wake might have forced tyre temperature management. But it still remains likely that they would have met on track.

Both Verstappen and Horner believe that the Dutchman had the pace to catch Leclerc anyway

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Of course, actually completing the pass is a different ask. After an embarrassment of riches for us in terms of the spectacle of Verstappen and Leclerc fighting over DRS in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, they haven’t since engaged in a proper, sustained dice. The change of position in Miami was almost a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ move, while the late climax in Florida was exaggerated by the safety car, and Leclerc never truly fought back with a lunge anyway.

DRS into Turn 1 would most likely have been Verstappen’s best opportunity to get by on track. He was sixth-fastest through the speed trap in the race, clocked at 202mph. Leclerc, however, albeit from a far smaller sample size in which to pick up a tow, was just 18th at 197mph.

Leclerc was able to deploy the Ferrari engine’s low-end punch out of Turn 16 to make an earlier escape down the 1.35-mile flat-out dash to the next braking zone at Turn 1. Meanwhile, the rebadged Honda power unit worked wonders with Red Bull’s skinny rear wing to deliver at high-speed. So, having closed on his newer rubber and with an underlying superior race pace, the run to the first corner would likely have left Leclerc rather exposed…

Would DRS have come to Verstappen's aid once again?

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images