Lewis attacks: “I lost a victory and Ferrari the chance to take more points.” The Monegasque downplays: “I wanted to give back the position, but Max slipped between the two of us.” Vasseur furious but doesn’t take sides: “Throwing away a victory like this is difficult to accept”
They never loved each other, but now between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc are in rags. THEThe Mexican Grand Prix which marked the triumph of Kimi Antonelli without the achievement of the new world champion would have gone down in history as theyet another fratricidal war between Ferrari drivers. There Leclerc’s misconduct against Hamilton which favored Verstappen’s double overtaking to the detriment of the Maranello cars, effectively taking away Hamilton’s chance of winning the race, triggered Hamilton’s furious and disorganized reaction towards his teammate. Already during the race Lewis’ anger towards Leclerc had leaked into the radio teams, then after the red flag which interrupted the race for several minutes the two ignored each other and when the grand prix resumed Hamilton vented all his frustration by burning Leclerc at the start, but his sprint wasn’t enough to even overtake Max. And then in the final laps the Englishman was never able to get close enough to the Dutchman’s Red Bull to attempt an overtaking.
The accusations
But once he got out of his Ferrari SF-26 Hamilton came down hard on his teammate: “A fight between teammates is acceptable, as long as it doesn’t prevent the team from achieving the best possible result. I believe the team’s interest should come first. I missed out on a win and Ferrari points for second place in the constructors’ championship. This is a lack of respect towards all the people who work in the factory. He’s 29 now, so I don’t think it’s a question of age, but of mentality. Either I win or neither of us wins and it shouldn’t be that way. At Silverstone I could have been a kamikaze, kicked him out and made us lose the victory. Instead I was happy for the team at that moment.” And then again: “We were first and second at turn 4, it was enough to maintain our positions. Anything can happen in the race, but when your teammate works against you and you lose positions like that, things get tough. We’ll talk about it face to face, we’ll see if this changes anything, but something certainly has to change.” Leclerc, knowing he had made a mistake, used soft tones: “The penalty was clearly deserved. To understand whether it should be five or ten seconds you need to analyze the situation and the mitigating circumstances. We both missed the corner, it’s clear that we both braked too late. I couldn’t make the corner, so I took it. My initial goal was to give the position back to Lewis, but unfortunately Max got between us. I asked the radio what to do and we felt the episode wasn’t clear enough to make me third. We’ll talk about it.” Team principal Fred Vasseur’s embarrassment is evident. But wouldn’t it be up to him to ensure that episodes of this kind don’t happen? “I think it’s a huge lack of respect for the brand – said Vasseur – for all the people who work at Maranello and for the efforts we are making. We have made a real step forward in terms of performance and throwing away a victory like this is hard to accept. I’m not pointing fingers at anyone, I want to talk to both of them. When you start first and third in Mexico, where overtaking hasn’t been done for 72 years, you don’t expect to finish second and fourth.” With four grands prix to go, Hamilton and Leclerc are fighting for second place in the world drivers’ standings currently occupied by Verstappen with 261 points, Lewis has 259, Charles 245. And then there’s the matter of maintaining second place in the constructors’ standings, but the impression is that hypothesizing a team effort with these premises is a utopia.
