Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has called out the Formula One Management (FOM) for not broadcasting Lewis Hamilton‘s radio message, where he asked the team to swap his position with his teammate Charles Leclerc.
The seven-time world champion was in the leading Ferrari SF-25 F1 car but due to setup-related challenges, his car wasn’t as fast as it had been on Saturday when he won the sprint race.
Leclerc’s Ferrari was quicker during the Grand Prix, and according to Vasseur, Hamilton asked his team to swap positions so Leclerc could go past him and close in on George Russell in third. However, Hamilton’s message to his team was not broadcast.
When Leclerc closed in on Hamilton, Ferrari asked to swap positions, leading the Briton to respond that he would do so when Leclerc got closer. It was only this bit that was shown on TV, leading fans and the media to assume that Ferrari had ordered the car swap.
For this, the team boss criticized the FOM and stressed that it was Hamilton’s call to swap positions. Addressing the media after the race, before Ferrari was struck with the double penalty, Vasseur said:
“I think this is a joke from FOM because the first call came from Lewis.
“Lewis asked us to swap, but to create the mess around the situation they broadcast only the second part of the question. We will discuss with them.”
He added:
“You can’t imagine the number of questions I had about this when I came from the garage to here. It’s all about the same thing: ‘Is it a mess?’ I said no, it’s Lewis who asked to swap.
“I’m not even sure you would even have these situations ten times at other teams in a season, and honestly from the pit wall we really appreciated the call from Lewis saying, ‘guys, I’m losing the pace, I’m keen to swap’.
“It took us one lap to ask him to swap with Charles and then the pace was back. He said ‘oh let’s stay like this for a little bit’ and we said ‘no, if you up the pace we swap’.”
Vasseur stressed that the communication between Hamilton and his race engineer Riccardo Adami was professional but insisted that questions should be directed to F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali regarding the decision not to air the message. He said:
“As a team the collaboration between the two guys is mega and I can’t complain a single second about something. I understand the question, but you have to ask the question to Stefano and not me because I’m not in charge of the broadcast.”
Both Ferrari drivers were disqualified after the race in Shanghai as their cars failed to comply with FIA’s post-race scrutiny.
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