Charles Leclerc, by lap 5 of the Baku Grand Prix, was a full second behind George Russell, while at the checkered flag the Mercedes finished second and the Ferrari came home in ninth. In Maranello, the team will need to identify the factors that caused such a gap between the Ferrari and the W16, without blaming the disappointing qualifying performance.
The explanation that podium ambitions were compromised by qualifying is only a half-truth. Starting a Grand Prix from tenth and twelfth positions is never ideal, even on a track like Baku, which has in the past allowed for significant comebacks.
The risk is getting stuck in a DRS train and circulating through the streets of the Azerbaijani capital without any real opportunities to challenge. Many drivers remained in the positions they secured in the opening laps, though not all.
By the fifth lap, Charles Leclerc had moved up to seventh, one second behind Russell’s Mercedes. Both drivers were essentially on the same pace, but by the finish, George crossed the line in second place while Charles ended a modest ninth.
It is possible to talk about tire choices (Russell started on hard tires, Leclerc on mediums) as well as car performance, but in this case, the starting position had little impact. Russell overtook Yuki Tsunoda’s Red Bull on track, then executed a prolonged overcut strategy up to lap 39 of the 51-lap race, passing Carlos Sainz, Liam Lawson, and Kimi Antonelli.
Leclerc had a mitigating factor. “I also had a small issue with the power unit for a few laps,” Charles confirmed. “We had a problem with Charles’ engine,” explained Frédéric Vasseur. “We need to investigate, and even though it was minor, it was enough to prevent him from overtaking on the straights, which explains why we remained stuck behind Liam Lawson,” he added, highlighting that the Ferrari started behind Lando Norris and finished behind him, pointing to the DRS train that influenced several drivers’ races.
The 51 laps in Baku also demonstrated Russell’s racecraft. It has long been known that Mercedes tends to perform better in cooler conditions, as already seen last June in Montreal. George’s example shows that with strong performance, it is possible to fight through the field despite starting position. It is understandable that Ferrari might lose performance to Mercedes in certain conditions, but this would have been the case regardless, even with a stellar qualifying by Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.
The Scuderia’s potential is better than what the Baku classification suggests, but it was penalized by suboptimal weekend management choices. “There are two parts to our work,” Fred Vasseur explained. “One is pure performance, the other is execution. In terms of performance, we made progress after Spa, but qualifying P10 and P12 yesterday was not what we expected. Now it is important to identify areas where we could have done better, because we made some mistakes and some wrong choices.”
Saturday’s error by Charles Leclerc was significant, but so was the decision to start on medium tires (again, with Charles), and overall, the car’s performance did not allow the team to achieve more than a very modest points haul.
Ultimately, beyond mistakes and poor choices, Ferrari still faces the problem that has been present since the first tests of the season in Bahrain. Managing the short operating window problem becomes increasingly complex, as the team has now faced races in high and low temperatures, on fast, slow, and medium-speed corners, with six different tire compounds, on dry and wet conditions, on permanent and street circuits. There is always an “if,” but one constant remains: this car will never be a true race winner. It might achieve a victory if everything—absolutely everything—aligns perfectly. Otherwise, success will be extremely difficult.
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