Charles Leclerc explains gap to McLaren in Baku: "They have a special engine map"

09/15/2024 04:30 PM

Charles Leclerc's Sunday in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the 6.003-kilometre Baku City Circuit took a different turn after being overtaken by Oscar Piastri. The Monegasque driver admitted that he made what he called a judgment error by almost leaving the door open for the Australian, who then proved unreachable behind the wheel of an extremely fast MCL38 in the final stages of the Baku race. While trailing behind the Woking car, the Ferrari driver noticed some details about his rivals’ machine, including a special engine mapping.

“McLaren had a mode to push the K (kinetic energy) more powerfully on the last straight, which made overtaking more difficult,” Charles Leclerc told Sky Sport in his interview at the end of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

There was also an unexpected factor related to the Pirelli tires. “What I don't understand is the gap after the pit stop. We expected a lot of warm-up time with the hard tires: I had six seconds on Oscar, but stopping one lap later, he was already right there with me. We need to look at this data, that's where we made a mistake. Then we struggled with the pace on the hards, also because we never did laps with a lot of fuel. With the medium tires, I had support in the slow sections, but with the hards, I never had that.” – Charles Leclerc concluded at the end of the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku.

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