Ferrari's chief strategist explained the decisions made by the team at the Azerbaijan GP, revealing his confidence that Charles Leclerc would have won the race.

"Charles was fighting for the lead with (Sergio) Perez and had (Max) Verstappen in his gearbox," commented Inaki Rueda after the race.

"Verstappen got into Charles' DRS zone, and we've been working on that lately. With such small margins against Red Bull, we are winning or losing games with overtaking with DRS."

"In Baku, we used a different rear wing and worked on our strategy. Crucially, when (Carlos) Sainz stopped, we realized that a virtual safety car (VSC) period was quite likely and we were ready."

"We prepared for a pit-stop by Charles in case the race direction triggered the VSC. This was crucial for our race because a VSC stop costs approximately 10 seconds less than a normal pit-stop."

"Because of this, Charles was able to make his only pit-stop of the race losing much less time than the Red Bulls. Then, after the VSC period, Charles would go all the way to the finish on the hard tires."

"Red Bull tried to stay on track with the medium tires for as long as possible, but they were losing a lot of ground. The mediums had a lot of degradation and Perez did badly trying to do that against Charles."

"Unfortunately, after 11 laps on the hard tires, Charles suffered a power unit failure and that ended our race. Our simulations indicate that, had there not been another VSC period, Charles would have won comfortably ahead of Verstappen."

After the double abandonment in Azerbaijan, Ferrari has fallen 80 points behind Red Bull in the constructors' championship, meaning an increasingly difficult task for the Scuderia. Rueda said that Ferrari is focused on the positives of Baku.

"We left Baku disappointed because we didn't score the number of points we should have, but we brought some positives. We had a very strong car in qualifying and in the race - we are able to fight in every possible scenario."

"Our reliability is a weak point. We are aware of it and it will be solved in the future. Our ambitions are still big and our goal has not changed."