Ferrari ‘scared’ to tell Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc what to do after Dutch GP strategy gaffe

Ferrari’s Dutch Grand Prix strategy showed it is “scared” to tell Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc what to do, according to the Formula 1 team’s former manager Peter Windsor.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton narrowly missed out on a podium at Zandvoort as he finished fourth, just behind Mercedes driver George Russell and ahead of his Ferrari team-mate Leclerc. 

Hamilton was left frustrated with Ferrari’s strategy during the race and publicity rebuked the team over the radio for “wasting time” after he became stuck behind Leclerc on fresh tyres amid his pursuit of a potential podium. 

The 41-year-old Briton felt Ferrari’s failure to swap its drivers cost the team a podium finish and vital world championship points. 

Appearing on the Cameron CC podcast, Windsor claimed Ferrari cannot successfully manage the Hamilton and Leclerc dynamic and questioned the team’s decision to change its driver line-up in the first place. 

“I always said, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, very good team. Carlos quick enough to win on his day when Charles has a problem. At the same time, he’s never really going to tread on Charles’s toes. It was a perfectly balanced team,” Windsor said. 

“So what did they do? They blew it apart and hired Lewis. I’m not in any way criticising Lewis’s decision to go to Ferrari or anything around that. All I’m saying is Ferrari did not need to do that. But when they’ve got two huge stars in the car, what are you going to do? It’s impossible to manage it. That’s why I kept saying keep Carlos Sainz. 

“You can’t manage that because Charles has his point of view, Lewis has his point of view. Both of them are to be respected, obviously, and the poor engineers in the garage have no ability to manage that. The only guy with any ability to manage it is Frederic Vasseur and we never really hear him on the radio anyway.”

Windsor reckons Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur should have taken matters into his own hands during the race.

“If you want to hire a Lewis Hamilton to replace a Carlos Sainz you know there’s going to be dramas and you know the situation we had in Zandvoort is absolutely bound to happen, you’ve got to have somebody who can make a decision and that somebody has to be the person that both drivers respect and respond to straight away,” he explained. 

“It can’t be one of the race engineers. Can’t even be a senior race engineer over both cars. It has to be somebody right at the top who says ‘right this is what we are doing, bang bang’ and that’s it, he’s running the team. 

“They don’t have that and that’s one of the reasons I said it was going to be a mess once they got Lewis alongside Charles. Same reason it would be a mess if you put Charles alongside Max, for example.”

When it was suggested to him that Ferrari might be scared to tell Leclerc what to do, Windsor replied: “Oh yeah, absolutely. But in the same way they don’t want to do it to Lewis Hamilton either. That’s exactly my point. They can’t say to either driver. 

“They are both megastars in their different ways. Lewis is a seven times champion. Charles is the guy never to have won a championship, but he’s the biggest hero at Ferrari and Italy and Monaco. They’ve both got their platforms and everybody’s scared to tell them what to do. 

“That’s why the mess is at Ferrari, because Fred at the top is not saying ‘this is what will happen’. Who else can say it? It doesn’t matter who says it, they are not going to listen.”