We’ve broken down what was going on when Charles Leclerc worriedly radioed his race engineer at the end of Friday practice in Baku
The Ferrari fans’ hearts dropped a few minutes before the end of the second free practice session for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when Charles Leclerc suddenly stepped off the gas and radioed worriedly: “What’s going on? There’s a problem with the engine, isn’t there? “
“I’ll get back to you on that,” replied his race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros. But that took time. First, Leclerc was told which cars were approaching from behind and which he should avoid. The Monegasque became impatient and demanded a quicker answer. And that’s what he got: “We think it’s all right. You can push.”
Leclerc asked worriedly at first: “Okay, so the loss of power was normal?” A radio message that was also broadcast on TV. The Ferrari driver’s apology for having stressed his race engineer so much could no longer be seen in the international picture direction: “It was my fault. But it was quite aggressive. “
In retrospect, Leclerc clarifies: “It wasn’t a problem with the power unit at all.” And there was no loss of power either, but, “I had completely forgotten that I had changed something. As a result, there was less power. But it was nothing bad.” Whether it had to do with recuperation or simply a different mapping, he leaves that open.
Generally, Friday was a successful day of practice for Ferrari. Leclerc set the fastest time in 1:43.224, three tenths of a second faster than the two Red Bulls – and if you were to string the fastest sectors together, it wouldn’t have been Sergio Perez in second, but the second Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.
“We had a good Friday,” said Leclerc. “We improved from the first to the second practice. But we still have to improve because Max and Carlos didn’t improve with the soft tyre. They still have reserves and there are a lot of question marks. The positive is that the tyre wear was low and the race pace was good. “
