Ferrari believe Charles Leclerc would have "comfortably" won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix had it not been for his race-ending engine blowout.
The Monegasque was leading the race in Baku when steam began pouring out of the back of his F1-75. The issue forced him to retire from the race, as his team-mate Carlos Sainz had earlier, gifting the win and a massive points haul to Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
Leclerc had lost the lead of the race at the first corner, when Sergio Perez overtook him following a poor start off the line. But his luck had changed when Ferrari made the call to bring him in for an early pitstop under the virtual safety car, caused by Sainz stopping on lap nine.
It meant he lost less time in the pits compared to a usual stop, and gave him the job of protecting his hard tyres for the rest of the race. By the time Red Bull had brought in Verstappen and Perez for fresh rubber, Leclerc was once again back out in front.
Fans were deprived of the chance of seeing the Red Bulls catch up and the battle for the lead which would have ensued. But according to Ferrari such a scrap might not even have taken place, as their simulations showed that Leclerc was on course to win the race at a canter.
"[Leclerc] was fighting for the lead with Perez and he had Verstappen on his gearbox," said sporting and strategy director Inaki Rueda in the team's official Azerbaijan Grand Prix debrief. "Verstappen got within DRS range of Charles and this is something we have been working on lately. With such small margins with Red Bull, we find ourselves winning or losing games with DRS overtakes.
"For Baku, we took a different rear wing and we worked on our strategy. Crucially, when Carlos stopped we realised it would very likely be a Virtual Safety Car period and we got ready. We got ready with Charles to pit in case race direction thought they had to deploy the VSC.
"This was crucial for our race because a pit-stop under VSC costs roughly 10 seconds less than a normal pit-stop. Because of this, Charles was able to do his only pit-stop of the race with much less penalty than both Red Bulls. So after the VSC period, Charles set off to go to the end on the hard tyres.
"Red Bull tried to go as long as possible on the medium tyres but they were dropping a lot. The medium tyres had a lot of degradation and Perez lost a lot of time trying to go longer and longer to offset himself to Charles. Unfortunately, after 11 laps on the hard tyres, Charles suffered a power unit failure and this cut our race short. Our simulations indicate that had there not been another VSC period, Charles would have won the race comfortably against Verstappen."
