Miami Gardens (United States) (AFP) – Lewis Hamilton showed his frustration with his Ferrari team’s tactics at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday as the Scuderia once again struggled to compete. Hamilton finished eighth with team-mate Charles Leclerc seventh as Ferrari remains with just one podium finish so far this season — Leclerc’s third place in Jeddah.
A fired-up Hamilton fired off several barbed comments over the team radio after asking for Leclerc to allow him to pass. The Briton had a spell in the race when he appeared to be driving quicker than Leclerc and clearly felt he had a better chance of closing ground on Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli. “I’m just burning up my tyres behind him. You want me to just sit here the whole race?” asked Hamilton.
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When he was finally allowed to pass, three laps later, Hamilton responded: “This is not good teamwork, that’s all I’m going to say… in China I got out of the way.” He was critical of the time it took the team to make their decisions, saying: “Have a tea break while you’re at it, come on!” When the seven-time world champion was given permission to move ahead of Leclerc, he was unable to make progress and, with the roles reversed and the Monte Carlo driver looking faster behind him, the team switched their positions back.
Hamilton was then informed that Carlos Sainz of Williams, the former Ferrari driver, was just 1.4 seconds behind him and responded, “You want me to let him past as well?” After the race, Hamilton said he needed to raise the issues. “I lost a lot of time behind Charles and in that moment I was thinking let’s make a concise decision and not waste time. I’m sure people didn’t like certain topics but you’ve got to understand it’s frustrating; people say way worse things than I say, it was more sarcastic than anything.”
“I’m not frustrated now but we will work internally and we keep pushing,” he said. Frederic Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, defended the thinking behind the moves and added, “I can understand the frustration of the guys in the car but in the end it was well executed.”
Leclerc opted for diplomacy. “It’s a difficult situation, I think I will unfortunately go for the boring answer and I’m not going to comment too much here,” he said. “It’s obvious today is not the way we want to manage a race; we will discuss internally to make better decisions,” Leclerc said. “There’s no bad feelings for Lewis, absolutely not; it’s just as a team we need to do better and today was a proof of that. For the rest, I don’t want to speak more into the details.”
© 2024 AFP
