Charles Leclerc gives his opinion on Lewis Hamilton's troubles.
It was a less than ideal racing weekend for Charles Leclerc at Miami. He was able to earn Ferrari their first podium of 2025 a couple of weeks ago. But once again, his SF25 was showing its incompetence against its competitors at the top. The situation was so bad that Leclerc and his teammate, Lewis Hamilton had to defend themselves against midfield cars. Even, Williams managed to earn more points that both Ferrari’s put together.
The Ferrari paddock is not as excited as expected of them in 2025. The Prancing Horses are far from the top step of the podium. The pace displayed by their cars every weekend is making them seem like a midfield car rather than a top team.
However, this weekend the tensions for Ferrari rose to new levels. It is quite clear that Ferrari have a very aggressive driving lineup this season. Both of their drivers are accustomed to the priority treatment since the start of their career. As such, it is natural that drivers will try to get the best results they can every weekend even if they are racing each other.
Ferrari has the habit of letting the faster driver get the better position in race to try and overtake the driver ahead. Their traditional strategy however, caught them off guard in Miami.
Lewis Hamilton wanted to swap positions with Leclerc in the latter stages of the race. It was clear that Lewis being on the medium tyres was consistently lapping better times than Leclerc. But, instead of chasing behind Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton wanted to overtake the driver in front and get a better finish.
Lewis conveyed his ideas to the team. But to his frustration, Ferrari took a lot of time delaying the strategy call to swap the cars. This made Hamilton lash out against his team over the radio. Naturally, Hamilton’s words were picked up the media and gained a lot of traction soon. Fred Vasseur, was quick to defend his team and his drivers.
But, when Charles Leclerc was asked about the situation between him and Lewis Hamilton at the Miami Grand Prix, this was his reply-
“I knew Lewis was on a medium, so if anything he would struggle a bit more to go to the end than me, so we had to take care of tyres, but I understand as well that he wanted to try and do something different, so I appreciate that. I mean I would have done the same thing if I was him, trying to be a bit more aggressive with the medium tyres, so there’s no bad feelings with Lewis, not at all.”
Leclerc himself complained about his tyres in the dirty air of Hamilton but conceded the position in order to give his teammate a better chance ahead of him. Leclerc has also highlighted his team’s struggles and is disappointed by the lack of pace they have displayed at Miami.
