HAMILTON CRITICISES FERRARI STRATEGY AFTER LOSING DUTCH GP PODIUM
Lewis Hamilton finished fourth at Zandvoort and made no attempt to hide his frustration, on the radio during the race and in front of the cameras afterwards. He has since apologised publicly for how he said it, though not for the substance.
The problem began with a tyre offset. Hamilton ran long on his opening medium stint to give himself fresher rubber later, passed Oscar Piastri for fifth on lap 35, and by lap 42 had caught Charles Leclerc, who was four laps older on tyres and considerably slower. “I’m quicker than Charles,” Hamilton told race engineer Carlo Santi.
Why Leclerc was still ahead is where it gets complicated. Ferrari had wanted him in on lap 41, but did not want him following George Russell’s Mercedes into the pit lane, so they told him to stop on the opposite lap to Russell. When Russell pitted, Leclerc obeyed that instruction and stayed out. Ferrari then told him to come in early on lap 42, and told him again on the same lap. Leclerc argued back, saying stopping then would leave him worse off against Russell, who had already pitted. He finally came in two laps later, and lost a further 3.4 seconds with a slow stop.
Hamilton’s radio grew shorter as this played out. “We are just losing time,” he said while stuck behind. Once Leclerc had finally gone, he came back with: “Great way of wasting time guys, good job.”
His race did not improve after that. With around 20 laps left and Hamilton leading, Santi raised the possibility of another stop for a new set of mediums. Hamilton, having watched Leclerc struggle on that compound, pushed back, and asked at one point whether the team were using him “as a guinea pig”. He stayed out on fading tyres, was passed by Lando Norris and Kimi Antonelli, and only stopped under a late virtual safety car. He finished fourth, behind the Russell he had been racing all afternoon.
The exchange after the flag summed it up. Santi thanked him and put the result down to bad luck with Russell. Hamilton disagreed flatly, saying they had not been unlucky, that the time was lost earlier and that it had cost third place.
His sharper criticism came afterwards, and it was comparative. Mercedes swapped its own cars with seven laps to go, Russell giving second place to Antonelli, who had fresher tyres and a chance at Norris. Both drivers agreed with it and it happened immediately. Hamilton pointed to that as the standard, saying that “to win championships you have to pick up every possible point”. He was careful to separate the pit wall from the garage, praising the mechanics, the pit stops and the upgrade the team brought to Zandvoort.
Team principal Fred Vasseur defended the calls. He said Ferrari deliberately did not tell Hamilton the plan, to avoid revealing it to rivals, and that keeping him out to the end would have been the right decision had the late virtual safety car not appeared. On Leclerc, he described it as confusion after the stop was extended by a lap, and said he was not worried.
So the answer to whether Ferrari made an error is not clean. The team did try to move Leclerc, twice, and he did not comply. But the fair criticism is that if Leclerc was being called in anyway, there was little sense in leaving Hamilton stuck behind him at all, and the whole sequence took too long to resolve.
It leaves Hamilton level on points with Russell in second, 59 behind Antonelli with 11 rounds to go. Ferrari’s home race at Monza is next, where the team is expected to run an upgraded power unit under the ADUO rules and a special livery.
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