Fred Vasseur (Ferrari) on Hamilton/Leclerc: “I have to protect the team”

SPEEDWEEK.com had already predicted it when Lewis Hamilton signed for Ferrari: sooner or later, the Englishman would lay claim to the same stretch of tarmac as the Monegasque Charles Leclerc, and that’s when the sparks would fly.

The two exceptional drivers have crossed paths several times since then, most recently at Monza. And on 10 September, Lewis Hamilton confirmed: “As for Charles and me, we sat down in private and discussed the tense situations. I appreciate that he didn’t shy away from this conversation, but is completely open with me. But such battles are perfectly normal in sport. It’s also inevitable that we’ll meet again on the track. Because he wants to achieve a good result just as much as I do.”

At Monza, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur looked years older. In the Madring paddock, the Frenchman told my colleague Roberto Chinchero from the Italian motorsport.com: “I had good discussions with Lewis and Charles; they’ve had a proper talk amongst themselves, and I reminded them of some of the fundamental principles of my team management.”

“I have to protect the team; that’s part of my job. And that’s exactly what I told the drivers – if we want to achieve results, then we have to protect the team, and that means taking responsibility.”

“I reminded Lewis that we won the race in Melbourne two years ago thanks to our strategy. I sent Ravin Jain onto the podium because it was right to reward him. When, on the other hand, we lost a race because of our strategy, I stepped in front of the cameras and took the blame.”

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“I don’t ask the drivers to hold back on being candid or forthright. But very often they’re much more relaxed with us than when they speak to the press. Lewis told me: ‘Fred, 80 per cent of what I said was positive, and they’ve only picked out the negative 20 per cent.’ We all know how it works. If you say the team is doing a good job and then add a ‘but’, that’s exactly the part that makes the headlines. It’s all part of the game.”

“Charles admitted during the discussion: ‘I was too aggressive.’ And that’s fine by me. When Kimi was battling with Russell, he also ended up in the gravel, just like Lewis did at the start. In our case, however, we very quickly went from an incident on the track to talking about a crisis in driver management. I think the two things need to be seen in the right perspective.”

To say that there are no rules of conduct does not reflect reality. You can’t expect contracts to list every single scenario that might occur on the track, because inevitably everything would become a matter of interpretation. ‘I was there’, ‘No, you were five centimetres further back’; that doesn’t solve anything. The principles are clear, and the drivers know them too.”