Sunday, the contrast is striking in the Ferrari ranks. While Charles Leclerc starts on medium tires, Hamilton opts for hard ones. An opposite strategy supposed to open up possibilities. But mid-race, nothing goes as planned. After his pit stop, Hamilton comes out on medium tires and finds himself stuck behind his Monegasque teammate, who is on hard tires. Quickly, tension rises on the Englishman’s radio: \u00ab I’m just burning my tires behind him. Do you want me to stay here the whole race? \u00bb<\/p>\n
His engineer, Riccardo Adami, is slow to give clear instructions: \u00ab We’ll get back to you. \u00bb This evasive response triggers an icy reply from Hamilton, who deems the strategic slowness unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Finally, Ferrari asks him to maintain the DRS with Leclerc to keep Carlos Sainz, 1.5 seconds behind. Hamilton retorts sharply: “Oh, you guys!” A few laps later, when the permission to overtake finally arrives, Leclerc does not move aside immediately. Hamilton fumes: \u00ab That’s not good teamwork, that’s all I have to say. In China, I moved over! \u00bb<\/p>\n
Adami tries to reframe him: \u00ab We swapped positions. \u00bb But the Briton, for his part, does not calm down: \u00ab Take a tea break while you’re at it, go on! \u00bb<\/p>\n
The message is clear: he considers his team too slow, too timid, too indecisive. And he makes it known with all the verve he’s capable of.<\/p>\n
Once the path is clear, Hamilton tries to escape… in vain. His tires are already worn from laps spent in Leclerc’s dirty air. The latter, now behind, complains in turn: \u00ab Lewis needs to go faster. I’m just getting dirty air now. \u00bb Ten laps later, as the duo begins to slightly catch up to Antonelli, Leclerc doubts: \u00ab Are we catching up to Antonelli? \u00bb<\/p>\n
\u00ab We’re coming back… quite slowly. Can you go faster? \u00bb Adami tries. Leclerc responds, lucidly: \u00ab No idea. I’m overheating here. \u00bb Result: Ferrari decides to switch the positions again. Leclerc gets back in front of Hamilton at turn 17, prompting a final jab from the latter: \u00ab Do you want me to let him pass too? \u00bb, referring to Carlos Sainz, who was back at 1.4 seconds.<\/p>\n
After the race, Hamilton wanted to calm things down. \u00ab Fred [Vasseur] came to my room. I put my hand on his shoulder and said to him: man, relax. Don’t be so sensitive. \u00bb For him, there was no question of apologizing for his tone on the radio: \u00ab I could have said much worse. You have to understand that we are under enormous pressure in the car. \u00bb<\/p>\n
And to add, very clear about his state of mind: \u00ab It wasn’t even anger. It was just: make a decision! You’re sitting on a chair, you have everything in front of you. Make the decision, quickly. \u00bb<\/p>\n
The message is as clear as it is scathing: the race direction needs to be sharper. \u00ab I want to win. I always have the drive to conquer. I’m not going to apologize for being a fighter. \u00bb<\/p>\n
On the team’s side, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Vasseur didn’t take it badly: “I can perfectly understand the frustration. They are champions. They are asked to prioritize the team. It’s never easy.” Similarly, Leclerc puts it into perspective: “There are no bad vibes with Lewis. I understand he wants to optimize as much as I do. But today, it wasn’t ideal.”<\/p>\n
In Miami, Ferrari not only managed a race strategy: it had to deal with the vigor, lucidity… and biting irony of one of the most demanding drivers in history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The seven-time world champion expressed his exasperation with Ferrari’s strategic decisions at the Miami Grand Prix, revealing growing tensions within the Italian team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":45828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[18,141,841],"class_list":["post-31609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-18","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-hamilton"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n