For the fourth grand prix Sunday in succession, Charles Leclerc will lead the field off the grid from pole position when the lights go out in Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
But despite taking five poles from the first seven rounds of the season, he has only converted two into wins. None of his last three poles have yielded a win.
In Miami, he was simply out-raced to the flag by the faster Red Bull of Max Verstappen. In Spain, a comfortable victory seemed assured until a sudden turbo failure ended his hopes. Last time out in Monaco, a long-awaited home race win was denied through a combination of unhelpful backmarkers and poorly-judged calls on the Ferrari pit wall.
Having secured yet another pole with his final lap in Q3 to deny Red Bull on Saturday once more, it’s little surprise that Leclerc is desperate to finally convert pole position into victory at the fourth consecutive time of asking.
“I just want to finish the job,” he said.
“The past two weekends I’ve already said that on the Saturday and it didn’t happen on the Sunday. So we need to make it… I mean, we don’t need to make it work but it will be very nice if we’ll make it work tomorrow. Let’s see how it goes in the first few laps, and then I will try to keep the lead.”
Ferrari and Leclerc have been considered championship contenders since winning the opening race of the season in Bahrain, but Red Bull have taken the chequered flag first the last four rounds. Do Ferrari think they can keep their rivals behind them in Baku?
“We know that, in race trim, our closest rivals are quicker than in qualifying,” explained Ferrari racing Laurent Mekies. “Maybe they have the edge over us when it comes to straight-line speed.”
“However, given what we have seen so far this weekend, I think the smallest detail can make the difference in the race, with many factors coming into play. The first of these is tyre management and as we…
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