The strategy loop on Sunday at Zandvoort told a familiar Ferrari story. A quick car, two drivers with the pace to be on the podium, and a pit wall that could not decide which of them to protect.

Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and Charles Leclerc fifth in the 72-lap race at Zandvoort on 23 August, with George Russell holding onto the last podium spot for Mercedes. Lando Norris won ahead of Kimi Antonelli.

The frustration boiled over on Hamilton’s radio. “Great way of wasting time guys, good job,” he told his engineer, before asking a few laps later, “Are you using me as a guinea pig?” Ferrari had left him out for an extended second stint of around 30 laps without telling him what the plan was, and by the time Norris and Antonelli closed him down on fresher rubber, the podium was gone.

Hamilton wants what Mercedes just did

“I want to win. I want to win. I’m here to win and it is difficult when you’re looking ahead and you see the two Mercedes drivers, they get the call and it’s done, they execute straight away,” Hamilton said after the race.

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Mercedes had swapped Russell and Antonelli late in the race to let the fresher car through. Ferrari, running Hamilton behind Leclerc with a similar dilemma, sat on their hands.

“So that was a challenge, but I do think the time was lost when I was behind Charles, which ultimately meant I had a bigger distance to cover to try and catch up with George at the end,” Hamilton added.

Leclerc questioned the same call

Leclerc did not defend the pit wall either. He picked apart the second stop as the one that decided the race.

“For me, the thing that I want to look at is more the second stop actually, where we were pushing George to kind of stop, and once he stopped, yes, Lewis was arriving, but two laps later, I kind of was requested to box,” Leclerc told reporters.

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“Apart from Lewis specifically, which of course, I mean, it’s one position more for the team, it doesn’t change anything, so it’s not that I’m disappointed or feeling any kind of way for that,” Leclerc said.

Vasseur says the silence was on purpose

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur pointed the finger at his own communication, but said the silence was deliberate.

“We didn’t want to tell him the strategy at this stage because we didn’t want to disclose it to the competitors,” Vasseur told reporters.

“The main issue is that we didn’t tell Lewis that we were expecting him to go to the end. It was not a matter of pushing.”

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Peter Windsor, the former Williams and Ferrari manager, went further in his own analysis, arguing that the wider problem is a Ferrari management team that will not commit to a call between two star drivers.

“They are both megastars in their different ways, everybody’s scared to tell them what to do,” Windsor said.

Antonelli 59 clear, Ferrari 87 down on Mercedes

Antonelli sits on 242 points, with Russell and Hamilton level on 183 and Leclerc a further 28 back on 155. Russell is officially second by countback, thanks to two race wins to Hamilton’s one, and Antonelli has already won six grands prix this season.

In the constructors’ championship it is Mercedes 425, Ferrari 338. The next race is the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on 6 September.

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