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On Monday, Ferrari chairman John Elkann gave his support to the brand’s Formula 1 engineers and mechanics, while also suggesting to The Athletic that the team’s drivers should “focus more and talk less.” It was an extraordinary comment from the man who personally orchestrated the signing of Lewis Hamilton, especially as there was no obvious critical post-race comment about the team from the either former champion or teammate Charles Leclerc.
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The comments come after a mixed weekend for the Ferrari brand in terms of sporting achievement. On Saturday in Bahrain, the marque won its first top-class global endurance championship titles in over five decades. On Sunday, the Brazilian GP was ruined when first Hamilton and then Leclerc had contact with other cars that led to a costly double retirement, just as the battle for second place in the F1 World Championship is heating up.
Starting from a disappointing 13th on the grid, Hamilton was hit by his Maranello predecessor Carlos Sainz off the start line. Trying to recover ground later in the lap, he clipped the back of Franco Colapinto, losing his front wing and triggering an early stop as well as earning a five-second penalty. After serving the time for the Colapinto clash, to ensure that it wasn’t carried over to Las Vegas, the car was quietly retired.
“I made a mistake out of the last corner,” said Hamilton when Road & Track asked him about the incident. “So then I got a good tow, and as I started to pull out, I felt like he moved at the same time, and I just clipped him… It’s obviously a bit disastrous for us, and I’m disappointed for everyone in the team, but I’m trying to keep my head above water, and trying to remain positive.”
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Leclerc, meanwhile, was an innocent victim of the restart clash between Oscar Piastri and Kimi Antonelli. He had run in a solid P3 in the early laps.
It wasn’t a great outcome, but it was made worse by Elkann’s comments on Monday. Hamilton had rued earlier in the weekend that Brazil was another step on his “nightmare” season, a description that’s hard to argue with. Despite what Elkann’s words suggest, Hamilton has remained tight-lipped about his obvious frustration with a lack of car development as the team focuses on its 2026 project.
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Before the Elkann saga kicked off, team principal Fred Vasseur conceded on Sunday evening that Interlagos had not been an easy race. “A tough weekend, at least a tough Sunday,” he said. “I had the feeling that with Charles we were in a good place. He had a good start, a good restart, that he took margin on the curbs, and we are paying the full price of the crash between Antonelli and Piastri.”
“I don’t care about who is at fault between Piastri and Antonelli, but for sure, it was not Charles. And it’s tough, because in this fight, you can’t give up points. When you are giving up points, you are giving points also to the others. It’s a double penalty. And in our case, it’s very harsh.”
In response to a question from Road & Track about Hamilton’s struggles, Vasseur noted that Hamilton’s car “lost a huge amount of downforce. We still don’t know if it was from the crash of Sainz or from the crash of the front wing under the other floor, but perhaps both of them. But after 200 metres,” he added, “when you have a P25… If you have a look on what Max did today, with a decent pace, I think we can come back and you can score good points. But two crashes, it’s too much.”
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Vasseur insisted that there was no point in Hamilton continuing with no chance of making it back to the top 10. “When you are last, and you are missing 35 points or 40 points of downforce on the car, I’m not sure that it makes sense,” he said. “We served the penalty, and we stopped the car.”
But Vasseur insisted that the upside was that the car was quick at some points, and Leclerc was certainly in the fight for a podium. “When you are at the end of the championship, it’s difficult to take positives when you have double-DNF,” he said, “But I would say that if I have to take a positive part of the weekend, it’s the pace—in quali, the recovery, even the start.”
“But… when you are at this point of the championship, you are more focused on points than on potential.”
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Vasseur noted that the team had some on-track strengths in the races held in Brazil, despite all the contact. “The pace was decent in the sprint race, we were blocked by Alonso the first part of the race, but then when we had clean air, and the quali went well,” he said. “It’s difficult to say something like this when you leave Brazil with double-zero, but I consider it a good weekend.”
Attention now turns to Vegas, where in the cool conditions Ferrari last year had the second-best car after the Mercedes, and was ahead of Red Bull and McLaren. A decent performance there is now more important than ever.
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“Last year, the race was quite late,” said Vasseur of the night race. “It was quite extreme on tires, it was a lot about putting tire temperature. Perhaps now with the new [earlier] timing, it will be a bit different. But I have one week to think about Vegas. And so far, it’s more difficult to digest what happened today.”
Vasseur’s response to the Brazil disaster came before Elkann’s comments about the team’s drivers. It remains to be seen how much firefighting has to go on behind the scenes; those words presumably won’t have been well-received by Hamilton, who has had such a difficult time of late, but so far appeared to have internal support. If Elkann, a crucial backer of Hamilton, isn’t happy, the relationship between the most successful team and most successful driver in Formula 1 history could be headed for rough seas.
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