Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has clarified what led to Lewis Hamilton’s radio outbursts during a tough Dutch Grand Prix weekend for the Formula 1 outfit.
The Scuderia finished off the podium for a second, consecutive race as Hamilton took fourth with team-mate Charles Leclerc in fifth – the reverse of Budapest – and it is clear what the defining moments were for Ferrari during Sunday’s 72-lap contest.
The first occurred midway through when Hamilton had just overtaken McLaren driver Oscar Piastri for fifth and started closing in on a much slower Leclerc. But due to the tight nature of Zandvoort, the seven-time world champion found it difficult to overtake and was therefore calling for team orders which didn’t arrive, allowing Lando Norris, plus Mercedes duo Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, to increase their advantage up ahead.
“Great way of wasting time guys, good job!” snapped a sarcastic Hamilton, who eventually took fourth when Leclerc made his second pitstop on lap 43 – one tour after he was initially supposed to do so.
The assumption was that the Briton would come in for fresh tyres shortly afterwards, considering those around the Ferrari cars did the same, but the Scuderia opted to keep Hamilton out for much longer, which meant he eventually took the lead.
But Norris and Antonelli rapidly closed in on fresher tyres, and by lap 53 they were all within a second of each other. “Are you using me as a guinea pig?” quipped Hamilton, who was practically a sitting duck as the McLaren and Mercedes respectively overtook him on laps 54 and 55.
The Ferrari driver was essentially left in the dark as to why his second stint was so long - 30 laps - and it required a lap 55 virtual safety car caused by Esteban Ocon for the 41-year-old to ditch his hard tyres for a fresh set of softs.
“We didn't want to tell him the strategy at this stage because we didn't want to disclose it to the competitors,” said Vasseur. “We wanted to keep him on track until the end, I think it would have been the right call.
“Charles was supposed to pit. We extended one lap and it was a kind of confusion. I'm not worried about this. Everybody will be back in the briefing. They will have a clear picture about the race.
Fred Vasseur
Photo by: Eric Le Galliot
“Charles was a bit frustrated at one stage about the compound. I think everybody was a bit lost about the compound. Norris started with mediums on the first start [before the red flag], then he moved to softs.
“The difference between the three compounds was very marginal today. It was difficult to have a clear picture on the strategy. Sometimes, we have to change the strategy or adapt, because we are trying to learn from the others. For them it's a bit frustrating.”
So it’s obvious what dominated discussions in Hamilton’s post-race media session, during which he called for Ferrari to have ‘better execution’. He cited his former team Mercedes as inspiration, considering the late team orders the Silver Arrows quickly deployed as Russell handed second to Antonelli on lap 65 after the championship leader took softs under the VSC, while the Briton stayed out on hards.
Russell initially told race engineer Marcus Dudley that “we’ve lost a double podium” as Hamilton closed in on his former team-mate, but the Mercedes driver held on for third and post-race said the swap was the correct decision. Had it not been for the earlier fiasco with Leclerc, Hamilton reckons he’d have had a better shot at claiming a late podium and Vasseur echoed those comments, claiming “the execution today was not that good”.
“You can always say after the race that it would have been better to do it on lap 46,” the Frenchman added. “The story is that, when Lewis came back on Charles, we were expecting him to pit.
“Then we had someone in the shadow of the car. We asked him to do one lap more. You can't ask him to do one lap more and to swap positions in the straight line. It's not so easy. If I have a look at the race now, I can see the difference. The main issue is that we didn't tell Lewis that we were expecting him to go to the end. It was not a matter of pushing.”
The result leaves Ferrari 87 points behind leader Mercedes and 75 ahead of third-placed McLaren, which has taken consecutive wins from pole via Norris, with 11 rounds remaining.
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