At the Dutch Grand Prix, Otmar Szafnauer walked up to Kym Illman and let him have it. “All the drivers are here. You’re just getting here. How do you know who came in first!” the former Alpine boss said he told the Australian photographer, recounting the exchange on the High Performance Racing podcast.

The exchange was the sharp end of a spat that had been building for weeks. It started on the High Performance podcast, where Szafnauer told host Jake Humphrey that Lewis Hamilton engineers his track arrivals to line up with the cameras.

“Lewis comes in when all the photographers are there, so he can wear the ridiculous clothing so they can take pictures,” Szafnauer said on the podcast, contrasting the Ferrari driver with Max Verstappen, whom he described as the first man into the paddock every weekend.

Only 13 days in 44

Illman was not having it. In a response on his own channel, the veteran F1 photographer took a stopwatch and a spreadsheet to the claim. His count: Hamilton had worn fashionable gear on 13 of 44 track days in 2026, and even on those days he often ducked the lens rather than sought it out.

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“That rarely happens. For a start, he’s only worn fashionable gear on 13 of the 44 track days this year, and I should know as I shoot driver arrivals every day,” Illman said.

“On some of those days, he’ll even go out of his way to escape the media, like day three at Silverstone this year when he scooted down the back route.”

By Illman’s estimate, only five or six days across the whole season fit the picture Szafnauer had painted.

He also pushed back on the Verstappen framing. “Typically speaking, Max is a mid to late arrival,” Illman wrote on his own site, listing several drivers who typically reach the paddock before Verstappen, Hamilton included.

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Work ethic ‘second to none’

Returning to the podcast to reflect on the row, Szafnauer moved to narrow the target of his criticism. He insisted he had never meant to question Hamilton’s professionalism.

“His work ethic is probably second to none,” Szafnauer said. “He, perhaps, works the hardest.”

He also tried to narrow his original point. “I said he comes in wearing that ridiculous stuff for the cameras. That’s all I said.”

Ferrari head to Monza this weekend with Hamilton third in the drivers’ standings behind the Mercedes pair of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell. The Italian Grand Prix runs on 6 September.

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