Hamilton to Ferrari: « Take a tea break while you’re at it! »
The seven-time world champion expressed his exasperation with Ferrari's strategic decisions at the Miami Grand Prix, revealing growing tensions within the Italian team.
Sunday, the contrast is striking in the Ferrari ranks. While Charles Leclerc starts on medium tires, Hamilton opts for hard ones. An opposite strategy supposed to open up possibilities. But mid-race, nothing goes as planned. After his pit stop, Hamilton comes out on medium tires and finds himself stuck behind his Monegasque teammate, who is on hard tires. Quickly, tension rises on the Englishman’s radio: « I’m just burning my tires behind him. Do you want me to stay here the whole race? »
His engineer, Riccardo Adami, is slow to give clear instructions: « We’ll get back to you. » This evasive response triggers an icy reply from Hamilton, who deems the strategic slowness unacceptable.
A static team, a fiery driver
Finally, Ferrari asks him to maintain the DRS with Leclerc to keep Carlos Sainz, 1.5 seconds behind. Hamilton retorts sharply: “Oh, you guys!” A few laps later, when the permission to overtake finally arrives, Leclerc does not move aside immediately. Hamilton fumes: « That’s not good teamwork, that’s all I have to say. In China, I moved over! »
Adami tries to reframe him: « We swapped positions. » But the Briton, for his part, does not calm down: « Take a tea break while you’re at it, go on! »
The message is clear: he considers his team too slow, too timid, too indecisive. And he makes it known with all the verve he’s capable of.
The maneuver too late?
Once the path is clear, Hamilton tries to escape… in vain. His tires are already worn from laps spent in Leclerc’s dirty air. The latter, now behind, complains in turn: « Lewis needs to go faster. I’m just getting dirty air now. » Ten laps later, as the duo begins to slightly catch up to Antonelli, Leclerc doubts: « Are we catching up to Antonelli? »
« We’re coming back… quite slowly. Can you go faster? » Adami tries. Leclerc responds, lucidly: « No idea. I’m overheating here. » Result: Ferrari decides to switch the positions again. Leclerc gets back in front of Hamilton at turn 17, prompting a final jab from the latter: « Do you want me to let him pass too? », referring to Carlos Sainz, who was back at 1.4 seconds.
A cold explanation
After the race, Hamilton wanted to calm things down. « Fred [Vasseur] came to my room. I put my hand on his shoulder and said to him: man, relax. Don’t be so sensitive. » For him, there was no question of apologizing for his tone on the radio: « I could have said much worse. You have to understand that we are under enormous pressure in the car. »
And to add, very clear about his state of mind: « It wasn’t even anger. It was just: make a decision! You’re sitting on a chair, you have everything in front of you. Make the decision, quickly. »
The message is as clear as it is scathing: the race direction needs to be sharper. « I want to win. I always have the drive to conquer. I’m not going to apologize for being a fighter. »
Ferrari under pressure
On the team’s side, Frédéric Vasseur didn’t take it badly: “I can perfectly understand the frustration. They are champions. They are asked to prioritize the team. It’s never easy.” Similarly, Leclerc puts it into perspective: “There are no bad vibes with Lewis. I understand he wants to optimize as much as I do. But today, it wasn’t ideal.”
In Miami, Ferrari not only managed a race strategy: it had to deal with the vigor, lucidity… and biting irony of one of the most demanding drivers in history.
