Charles Leclerc revealed that he was afraid he would crash in the closing stages of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after he lost all grip on his hard tyres, according to RacingNews365.

The Ferrari driver made a strong start from pole position at the Baku Street Circuit and built a healthy advantage in the opening stint.

Leclerc was one of the last of the front-running drivers to pit for hard tyres on lap 16 and comfortably retained the lead.

However, Piastri overtook the Monégasque four laps later for the lead of the race. Despite coming close, Leclerc failed to reclaim the lead.

Ultimately, he pushed his hard tyres too much, resulting in Leclerc being forced to defend aggressively ahead of Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz to salvage second place.

Perez and Sainz ended up crashing out on the penultimate lap, relieving all pressure from Leclerc, who revealed after the race that he realised Piastri was too strong.

"I think as soon as we put the hard tyres on," Leclerc said. "On the medium, we were very competitive, and the car felt good.

"Unfortunately, we didn't do any high-fuel running on my side in FP1 or FP2, and we went for a direction that maybe in the race was a bit more difficult to manage, especially on the hard tyres.

"I was really struggling to just keep those rear tyres. And towards the end I really thought that in one corner or two, I thought that I will put it in the wall. It was very close.

"But second today, McLaren and Oscar have done an exceptional job and have been better than us. It's obviously a huge shame for Carlos on the last lap, but hopefully everybody is okay."