Sarcastic Hamilton tells Ferrari to take a tea-break
Lewis Hamilton has endured a tough debut season at Ferrari, struggling to keep pace with teammate Charles Leclerc for much of the campaign. (EPA Images pic)
MIAMI : Lewis Hamilton turned on the sarcasm to show his frustration with Ferrari in radio exchanges during the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday.
The seven times Formula One world champion told the Italian team to 'have a tea-break while you're at it' after the pit wall finally confirmed teammate Charles Leclerc would let him through.
'This is not good team work, that's all I'm going to say,' he had said earlier, complaining he was just 'burning up my tyres' in the dirty air behind the Monegasque.
'So you want me to just sit here (behind Leclerc) the whole race?' he said as the team informed him of the gap to Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli ahead of Leclerc without giving any instruction on passing.
When the swap happened, Hamilton was unable to pull away at the rate expected and Leclerc then told the team he needed the Briton to go faster.
The positions were reversed again, with Hamilton turning sarcastic again when his race engineer informed him that Williams' Carlos Sainz, the driver he replaced at Ferrari in January, was 1.4 seconds behind.
'You want me to let him past as well?,' said Hamilton pointedly.
Hamilton held off Sainz to finish eighth, with Leclerc seventh, but the pair collided as the Spaniard tried to go past on the last lap. Stewards decided to take no further action after investigating.
Asked about the exchanges after the race, Leclerc said he did not want to comment.
'It's obvious today was not the way we want to manage a race,' he added. 'We will discuss internally in order to make better decisions. There is no bad feelings for Lewis, absolutely not. It's just that as a team we need to do better.'
Hamilton, third in the Saturday sprint and 12th on the grid for the main grand prix, said he really enjoyed the race despite Ferrari lacking a lot of pace.
'I lost a lot of time behind Charles and in that moment I was, like, come on just make a decision and don't waste time. Some people didn't like the comments.
'People say way worse things than I say. It was more sarcastic than anything. I'm not frustrated now. We'll work internally, have discussions and keep pushing.'
Team boss Fred Vasseur said he could understand his drivers' frustrations.
'Lewis was behind Charles, he was with softer compounds and we let him go. Then we swapped back at the end. We gave Lewis a chance to go in front of Charles but it was impossible to overtake (Antonelli).'
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