Hamilton spent much of Sunday afternoon at Zandvoort stuck behind his own teammate. Running on fresher tyres from lap 40 and lapping quicker than Charles Leclerc, he repeatedly asked for a swap on the radio. Ferrari never called it.
“I’m quicker than Charles. These tyres are better,” Hamilton told his race engineer Carlo Santi, in radio traffic documented by Motorsport.com.
“A great way of wasting time guys, good job.”
Leclerc eventually cleared the way by pitting on lap 43. By then Hamilton had lost the tow he needed on George Russell for third, and he finished fourth. Leclerc came home fifth.
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Hamilton drew a pointed comparison with his old team afterwards, speaking to reporters.
“It is difficult when you are looking ahead and you see the two Mercedes drivers, they get the call and it’s done, and they execute straight away.”
Vasseur owned the miscue
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur conceded the plan had broken down, even as he defended the idea behind it.
“We didn’t want to tell him the strategy at this stage because we didn’t want to disclose it to the competitors,” Vasseur said.
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“The execution today was not that good.”
Ferrari had wanted Hamilton to stay out until near the end of the race on one long stint, with Leclerc pitting first. When Leclerc’s stop was pushed a lap deeper than planned, Hamilton was left circulating without knowing he was on a different strategy from his teammate.
Smedley wants a clear No. 1
Rob Smedley, who worked at Ferrari as a race engineer during the Felipe Massa era, has spent much of this season arguing that Maranello can no longer split its resources evenly between Hamilton and Leclerc. He returned to the theme on the High Performance Racing podcast, as reported by RacingNews365.
“If Ferrari want to have an impact on this world championship, they have to get behind him,” Smedley said.
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“As hard as that is for Charles and the team that sits on that side of the garage with Charles and all the rest of it, they all work for Ferrari.”
“They haven’t got the best car consistently, but they have on occasions got the best car, and they’re going to make it count then, and they’re going to make sure that Lewis wins.”
Smedley put the same case more bluntly earlier in the season, calling explicit favouritism toward Hamilton “the one and only strategy” Ferrari has left in the drivers’ championship, according to F1i’s report on the podcast.
The standings after Zandvoort
After the Dutch Grand Prix, the top of the drivers’ table reads:
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- Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes): 242
- George Russell (Mercedes): 183
- Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari): 183
- Lando Norris (McLaren): 159
- Charles Leclerc (Ferrari): 155
Hamilton and Russell are level on points, with Russell now second on countback after his sprint win and third place at Zandvoort. Leclerc sits 28 points behind Hamilton. Antonelli’s lead has stretched to 59.
Sunday at Monza
Ferrari’s home race is on Sunday 6 September, with lights out at 3pm local time.
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