Scuderia Ferrari planned to gain a tow from Lewis Hamilton in their attempt to take pole position at the Baku City Circuit last weekend, and succeeded in doing so with Charles Leclerc. Given the long start/finish straight to negotiate, the chance arose for teams to strategically create a tow for their drivers and gain vital tenths of a second in qualifying trim.
By positioning themselves a perfect distance behind the car ahead, drivers could increase their top speed by facing less resistance as the car ahead punches a hole in the air.
And in Q3, Scuderia Ferrari decided Hamilton was the perfect target as they got Charles into position. The end result? The Monegasque driver took pole by 0.23sec over Hamilton.
“It’s always a compromise between wanting a tow and going at the end of the group and having the risk too late, to have a yellow or red flag in front of you,” explained Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies, quoted by Motorsport.com – “On the other hand, going in the front of the queue and having a clean out-lap but losing quite a few tenths of slipstream. It is a compromise in that case. It was perfectly timed, Mercedes was doing a prep lap. We knew about it, Charles knew about it, he timed his out-lap perfectly, building up the right gap to land pretty much on Lewis’ gearbox for the final straight for him. It was definitely a super job from his side and altogether, his team did very good managing a difficult qualifying.” – he explained.
While Ferrari’s masterplan was a success, Charles Leclerc’s second pole position in as many races again came with controversy after in Monaco, it was Charles’ Q3 crash that caused the session to be brought to an early end under red flags, thereby converting his provisional pole position into P1 on the grid.
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