{"id":289021,"date":"2025-04-24T06:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T06:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/24\/verstappen-wins-in-azerbaijan-after-leclerc-engine-failure\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T06:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T06:49:06","slug":"verstappen-wins-in-azerbaijan-after-leclerc-engine-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/24\/verstappen-wins-in-azerbaijan-after-leclerc-engine-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Verstappen wins in Azerbaijan after Leclerc engine failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/data.indianexpress.com\/election2019\/track_1x1.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Verstappen wins in Azerbaijan after Leclerc engine failure\" title=\"Verstappen wins in Azerbaijan after Leclerc engine failure\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>As Charles Leclerc\u2019s Formula One title challenge falls apart, Max Verstappen is there to take advantage.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen extended his Formula One championship lead by winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday after Leclerc retired from the lead with an engine failure.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Leclerc started from pole but immediately lost the lead to Sergio P\u00e9rez, Verstappen\u2019s Red Bull teammate, in the first corner. The Ferrari driver regained the lead with a smart strategy call to pit under \u201cvirtual safety car\u201d speed restrictions while the two Red Bull cars stayed out.<\/p>\n<div class=\"osv-ad-class\" style=\"background-color: #f2f2f2;height: 375px;margin-bottom: 15px;\">\n<p>Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Leclerc seemed to poised to challenge for the win, but the Monaco driver\u2019s car started spewing smoke on lap 20 of 51 and he had to pull into the pits. It was his second retirement in three races.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt hurts. We really need to look into that for it to not happen again. I don\u2019t really find the right words to describe, obviously it is very disappointing,\u201d Leclerc said.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen had passed P\u00e9rez shortly before Leclerc\u2019s failure and the reigning F1 champion cruised to his fifth win of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen took the win a year after he was headed to victory in Baku, only for a blown tire to hurl him into the wall while leading with three laps to go. There were more late reliability concerns Sunday when Verstappen told his team the car felt odd under braking, but he was able to make it to the finish.<\/p>\n<div class=\"adboxtop adsizes\">\n<p>Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cYou can never make up what you lost last year but I think today we had incredible pace in the car, we could really look after the tires and chip away at it and pass for the lead,\u201d Verstappen said. \u201cBut then of course, also, maybe a tiny bit lucky with (Leclerc\u2019s) retirement. I think nevertheless our car was really quick today and could have closed that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull went 1-2 in the race with P\u00e9rez finishing second, while Mercedes was third and fourth with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p>P\u00e9rez, who won in Azerbaijan last year, said Red Bull made the \u201cright call\u201d not to let him fight Verstappen for the win and said he struggled with worn tires.<\/p>\n<p>Ferrari had a terrible day as both Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. failed to finish, as did the Ferrari-powered cars of Zhou Guanyu and Kevin Magnussen.<\/p>\n<div class=\"adboxtop adsizes\">\n<p>Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It was the first time since the Italian Grand Prix in 2020 that the Ferrari team had to retire both cars.<\/p>\n<p>The slump in Ferrari reliability comes as Red Bull seems to have solved its own issues. Verstappen and P\u00e9rez both ground to a halt in the opening race of the season in Bahrain, Red Bull\u2019s first race since bringing engine production in-house for 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen leads the standings by 21 points over P\u00e9rez, while Leclerc dropped to third and is 34 points behind Verstappen.<\/p>\n<p>Seven-time champion Hamilton has complained of back pain from the Mercedes\u2019 tendency to bounce at high speed, and he was holding his lower back as he gingerly climbed out of the car Sunday after finishing fourth.<\/p>\n<div class=\"adboxtop adsizes\">\n<p>Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s definitely make some changes,\u201d he told team boss Toto Wolff.<\/p>\n<p>Pierre Gasly was fifth for AlphaTauri and Sebastian Vettel sixth for Alfa Romeo.<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Alonso of Alpine held off the two McLarens of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris to finish seventh, and Alonso\u2019s teammate Esteban Ocon was 10th.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\nif(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\nn.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\ns.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\nfbq('init', '444470064056909');\nfbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/sports\/motor-sport\/verstappen-wins-in-azerbaijan-after-leclerc-engine-failure-7966128\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Charles Leclerc\u2019s Formula One title challenge falls apart, Max Verstappen is there to take advantage. Verstappen extended his Formula One championship lead by winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday after Leclerc retired from the lead with an engine failure. Leclerc started from pole but immediately lost the lead to Sergio P\u00e9rez, Verstappen\u2019s Red [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/data.indianexpress.com\/election2019\/track_1x1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[605],"tags":[35757,108045,108046,5756,13877,17651,13878,218599,217797,210836,59178,1852,12479,1428,8613],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289023,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289021\/revisions\/289023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}