Lewis Hamilton Breaks His Silence on the Internal Conflict at Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton has chosen to be transparent in order to clarify what is happening at Ferrari following the complicated weekend at Monza. During the traditional Thursday press conference ahead of the Grand Prix (which will be held for the first time in history at the Madrid Circuito de Madrid), the seven-time world champion spoke candidly about his face-to-face meeting with team principal Frederic Vasseur.

“I spoke with Fred earlier this week; it was an open and honest conversation,” Hamilton told reporters. “We needed to realign our goals and working methods after a difficult weekend. Of course, there will always be differing opinions; the important thing is to be good at finding common ground, a shared direction. I have to say that in this past year and a half at Ferrari, we’ve made great progress in this regard as well.”

It was inevitable, then, to revisit the incident with Charles Leclerc in the early stages of the Italian Grand Prix: “There’s no tension; if we look at the history of Formula 1, we find many teammates who have competed against each other. It’s nothing new, and it’s nothing serious. There were no ground rules, and I didn’t push for any. Right now, the priority is to improve our results: we’ll discuss this further—you don’t change course in two days.”

World Champion in 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, Lewis Hamilton is in his second year at Ferrari. His first season saw him celebrate victory only in the Sprint race in China, without securing any other notable finishes. This year, however, he won the Catalan Grand Prix and finished on the podium in four other Grand Prix races (third in China and Great Britain, second in Canada and Monaco), also taking second place in the Silverstone Sprint and third in the Shanghai Sprint.