{"id":544399,"date":"2026-03-16T16:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544399\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:44:13","slug":"calling-off-hamilton-leclerc-fight-would-have-been-unfair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544399\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling off Hamilton-Leclerc fight would have been “unfair”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur defended their decision to allow Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc to fight for position in the Chinese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

The pair spent several laps attacking and defending, during which time their pace dropped, allowing race leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> to pull away. Hamilton and Leclerc briefly touched at one point but Vasseur said he did not want to tell them to hold positions and stop fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI trust both of them and I didn\u2019t want to ask them to freeze the positions, because that would have been unfair,\u201d said Vasseur. \u201cThey are professionals and today\u2019s battle was good for the team and good for the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton eventually emerged ahead and took third place, achieving his first podium finish as a Ferrari driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat battle with Charles at the end was awesome,\u201d he said. \u201cA great wheel-to-wheel battle, very fair and just what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was one moment we did touch, but it was subtle, just a kiss, so it\u2019s okay,\u201d he added. \u201cBut that\u2019s what this is about. It\u2019s about tough racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair fought a similarly tight battle in Saturday\u2019s sprint race. Leclerc finished ahead on that occasion but indicated he was not happy with how close they got at times, telling his race engineer it was \u201ca shame there was a bit more fighting than what I would have hoped.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

However Leclerc was content after finishing fourth behind Hamilton on Sunday. \u201cI actually really enjoyed the race,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m of course a little bit disappointed to lose out on the podium but on the other hand I\u2019m happy for Lewis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he deserves it more than I do on a weekend like this where he\u2019s been more on top of things than me and just has been stronger since FP1 to now. But it was a very nice race, I enjoyed the fights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only big negative I would say is the gap to Mercedes,\u201d Leclerc added. \u201cOn a day like this we can see that they are a big step ahead of everyone, so we\u2019ve got to work hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2026 Chinese Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2026 Chinese Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur defended their decision to allow Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to fight for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[265950,64,63,826,18894,823,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-544399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-2026-chinese-grand-prix","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ferrari","tag-frederic-vasseur","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}