Leclerc wants answers after Ferrari power glitch and team-orders tangle in Baku
Charles Leclerc left Baku with more questions than points, frustrated by an intermittent power unit glitch and a messy bout of Ferrari team orders that turned a damage-limitation Sunday into a ninth-place trudge.
The weekend started off-kilter. A four-time polesitter around the walls of the Caspian, Leclerc put his Ferrari in the barriers in qualifying and never truly recovered. From there, his race unraveled in two acts: first, a mysterious loss of grunt in the opening stint; then, a late intra-team shuffle that didn’t shuffle back.
“Unfortunately, I had a quite big power unit issue for 10 laps in the first stint and we don’t really know the reason for that yet,” he said. “It kind of came back from one lap to the other. We don’t know what happened, so I need more info.”
Leclerc’s description matched what the onboards showed: one lap the SF-25 looked punchy, the next it was flat on the straights. That’s a nightmare in Baku’s never-ending flat-out final sector, where the draft and DRS can make or break your day. Stuck in a train, the Monegasque watched the chance to gain ground fade in the heat haze.
“It’s not like it’s been there for the whole race – I was fine towards the end,” he added. “But in the phase where we probably had the chance to actually overtake cars, I was just stuck in DRS and very slow down the straight, so I couldn’t do much. I had full power for the second part of the race and it still wasn’t enough to get past, so it was very frustrating.”
Team principal Fred Vasseur put a number on it: roughly half a second a lap bled away by the fault. “We had an issue with Charles’ engine, which we will now investigate,” he said. “Even if it was marginal, it was enough to prevent him from being able to overtake in a straight line, which explains why we were stuck behind Lawson.”
That was only half the story. Late on, Ferrari rolled the dice with team orders, asking Leclerc to cede position to Lewis Hamilton on fresher tyres to chase Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson. The expectation was clear: if Hamilton couldn’t finish the job, he’d hand the place back. He didn’t, and the chequered flag arrived with Leclerc still behind.
Publicly, Leclerc kept his cool, calling it a disappointing weekend overall and insisting he didn’t “care” about missing eighth place. But over the radio he was sharper, labelling the botched swap “stupid” and “not fair” in the immediate aftermath, and later hinting the “rules were not respected.”
It’s not the kind of flashpoint Ferrari wants between two heavyweights in a season where execution is everything. Yet the nuance matters: Hamilton was unleashed to attack with better rubber, and Ferrari saw a window to grab a result. That it didn’t come off doesn’t make the call irrational—but the follow-through, and the clarity of what was agreed, will be under the microscope in Maranello this week.
The timing is awkward. Azerbaijan has been a happy hunting ground for Leclerc, whose single-lap mastery has long been a Baku staple. To walk away with ninth, engine gremlins and team politics in tow, is the kind of Sunday that sours a debrief.
Vasseur’s vow to find the fault before Singapore is the bare minimum. It needs a fix—not just for straight-line speed, but for trust. Leclerc’s request for “more info” isn’t a throwaway line; it’s the driver saying, give me the tools and the transparency. He’ll take the risks. He just wants to know the car won’t pull the rug in the one part of the lap where it matters most.
As for the team orders, Ferrari’s messaging has to be bulletproof next time. If you ask your lead scorer to play the team game, you’d better deliver the return leg or the explanation. In a season already tight at the sharp end, those fine margins aren’t just about aero load and tyre drop-off—they’re about how a garage navigates the messy human stuff at 300 km/h.
Baku won’t define Ferrari’s year. But it did underline an old truth: in this championship, you can’t afford unforced errors and mystery maladies on the same afternoon. Leclerc did his bit to keep it on the road; now it’s on Ferrari to tidy up the rest. Singapore, with its precision and patience, will tell us if they have.
