The radio tensions between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton are not a problem for Ferrari boss, Frédéric Vasseur, who, at the end of the race on Sunday in Miami, preferred to focus on ways to improve the car’s performance.
There was a crowd on Sunday evening in the Ferrari hospitality area. And it wasn’t to get a good seat to listen to Pitbull’s concert broadcast on the giant screens of the Hard Rock Stadium, which could be comfortably followed from the Scuderia’s terrace. The entire press, especially the British, had come to understand the perceived slight against their driver.
During the end of the race, which was much more boring and monotonous than the beginning, the broadcast focused on the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc for sixth place in the Miami GP (the Briton finished 8th, his teammate, 7th). After having long chained all the live TVs, Frédéric Vasseur was amused, as he sat in front of a much larger assembly than usual, by this success. “I didn’t know we had won,” he joked before calming the spirits.
A few minutes earlier, as soon as he got out of the car, Hamilton had done the same in the mixed zone. However, he had not been tender during the exchanged conversations, first demanding instructions to be let through before complaining with biting irony when his Monegasque teammate had overtaken him again. “You probably think it took us a long time to ask Charles to let Lewis pass, who was on a different strategy,” confessed the boss of the Scuderia. “But, first know that the FOM is always lagging and that for us, we think before we decide. And to assess whether Lewis’s pace came from his tires” (medium, while Leclerc had hard tires) “or the effect of the DRS, we gave ourselves a lap or a lap and a half, maybe. On TV, you get our conversations later.”
Frédéric Vasseur
“Our problem comes from our qualifications. Starting in the pack, we complicate our lives. Our best times on Saturday, from Charles as well as Lewis, were signed on worn tires. That’s a sign.”
The same thought crossed Leclerc’s mind when he began to grumble, noticing that Hamilton was not catching up to Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes without DRS. In the end, it was Leclerc’s car that managed to shave off a few seconds towards the end of the race, gaining on the Italian’s vehicle. Leclerc, too, inevitably complained. Over the radio. Because once he got out of the car, the Monegasque, like Hamilton, had calmed down. “I would have done the same,” he explained. “There’s no tension between us. We might need to better coordinate these decisions to swap positions.”
A practice that Vasseur also defends. “Of course, when you have two high-level drivers, you know they’re going to be close to each other,” continued the team boss. “And you also know that a driver never happily lets another car pass. Especially their teammate’s. There’s frustration, and it’s understandable. I don’t think it’s our problem, because unlike other teams, we made the swap. Twice. And we’ve done it in other races. That’s how we operate.”
“It’s poor teamwork”: at Ferrari, Hamilton and Leclerc’s radios heated up
The British press, finally reassured, could leave while the Scuderia boss detailed the disappointing results of the weekend. “Firstly, today (Sunday), “McLaren was clearly on another planet,” he analyzed, very calmly. “But in race pace, our car is not stable. Our problem comes from our qualifications. Starting in the pack, we complicate our lives. Our best times on Saturday, from both Charles and Lewis, were clocked on worn tires. That’s a sign.”
Understand that Ferrari, and its drivers, who are usually not slouches on a lap, are struggling to find the right window to exploit this year’s Pirelli tires. And it’s primarily in this area that the Scuderia team will be working.
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