Ferrari, storm over Hamilton after order ignored: Leclerc furious

Another race to forget for Ferrari, which also disappointed at the Gran Premio d’Azerbaijan, confirming the enormous difficulties encountered this season. In Baku Lewis Hamilton finished eighth, Charles Leclerc ninth: to make matters worse, a controversy erupted after the race over a team order ignored by the seven-time world champion.

In the finale, the Englishman in fact decided not to carry out the’order to return the position to Leclerc, who had been overtaken mid-race by his teammate due to obvious difficulties with his single-seater. “If Lewis doesn&#8217t overtake, you”ll swap positions on the final straight at the end of the lap” so had reassured the Monegasque via team radio engineer Bryan Bozzi.

Hamilton instead decided to lift his foot off the’accelerator only at the finish line, and the positions remained unchanged. After the race, Leclerc blurted out over the radio: “We are only talking about an eighth place. He may be happy but for me it is a stupid choice, not right”. In the post-race the driver from the Principality tried to correct himself: “It is not the end of the world, we are talking about an eighth and ninth place, I will not think about it on the way home. Rather I will reflect on the disappointing performance this weekend”.

This is Lewis Hamilton’s response: “Internally we will figure out what could have been done differently. Certainly yesterday at the operational level we could have done a better job, so it is already something we have to work on”.