Lewis Hamilton was a bit relaxed after F1 Miami GP, as Charles Leclerc didn’t wish to say much, while Frederic Vasseur expanded on radio saga.
It was just not Ferrari’s weekend in F1 Miami GP. They struggled big time in qualifying which saw Hamilton getting knocked out in Q2. Leclerc couldn’t even start the sprint race after crashing out in the reconnaissance lap. The only positive factor was a third place for the Brit in the sprint.
The main race saw Hamilton gain places from 12th, but Leclerc was mostly stuck outside the Top 10. Both the Mercedes and McLaren cars were out of reach along with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. But they didn’t have the legs to catch Williams’ Alexander Albon even.
Hamilton cleared Haas’ Esteban Ocon and gained via VSC pit stop to slot himself behind Leclerc in eighth. They had Williams’ Carlos Sainz ahead at one point, but both managed to clear him – although the threat never vanished, with the Spaniard close behind in the order.
The Ferrari were in a battle of their own. On the medium compound, Hamilton had more pace and urged the team to swap places to catch Andrea Kimi Antonelli ahead. But the team wanted to understand if the pace advantage for the Brit was down to DRS factor of the Monegasque.
They gave in eventually and Hamilton started to close in on Antonelli albeit at a slower pace. Leclerc was never shaken off and his hard tyre started to come alive towards the end, which pushed for another swap. The whole saga was caught on the radio, giving a chance to create headlines.
In fact, team boss Vasseur immediately went to Hamilton after the race to lighten his mood. It helped as the Brit was a bit more relaxed when speaking to media. He didn’t know that his radio chatter created a stir and was termed to be aggressive when recalling China moment or using sarcasm.
Hamilton laughed off during the media interaction, while praising the team for the work done. He felt better in the car even though the results didn’t show for it. Teammate Leclerc didn’t wish to go into the details, but felt the communication and discussion could have been done in a better way.
He was more concerned about the pace and had no issues with Hamilton pushing for a swap. Vasseur, meanwhile, explained the situation. He wanted to calm the Brit down after what transpired, as he feels the qualifying pace dictated how the grand prix panned out for Ferrari.
Whole swap procedure –
Hamilton: “Firstly, I generally enjoyed the race – I think this weekend, whilst we’re not as quick as we want to be, I feel like I had a better weekend in general. The result might not show necessarily today, but starting 12th it was very hard to overtake here, cars are also so close. I got onto the medium tyre and I felt the car really come alive and I felt super optimistic in that moment. All I could see is a Mercedes ahead and I was thinking maybe we can get up to sixth or something, but we lost a lot of time in those laps with Charles and I. I was clearly good for it in that moment, and I didn’t think the decision came quick enough. For sure, at that time, you are like, ‘come on’, that kind of stuff. I have no problems with either team or with Charles, but I think we could do better. It is the car where we need to improve, ultimately we are fighting for seventh and eighth, so.”
Leclerc: “Most of the time I say something. Today, I don’t think I’ll say anything. I think the story is going to be big enough already and we need to do better, that’s for sure. Today was not ideal and was far from maximising our potential but we’ve got to regroup as a team and be better. No, I just think we maybe should have discussed a little bit more before doing the swap because obviously you are trying to go to the end with those tyres. So I’m trying to do a good job with my tyres and then everything is tricky. I did not expect Carlos to be so close. So all of this made the situation a bit trickier.
“But again I think there’s plenty for us to look at and as I said we need to do a step and we need to be robust enough that whenever we find ourselves in those situations we do better. Not really. 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. I understand that he wants to try and optimise as much as I want to try and optimise the car’s potential. The car potential is just this, which is frustrating and yeah.”
Vasseur: “Okay, let’s go directly to the point. It didn’t take so long. It was one lap and a half or something like this. And when we have two cars, not with the same strategy, the first thing for me to understand if it’s faster when you are behind due to the DRS or not. It took us one lap. It means that it’s one minute 30 to understand, and then we asked them to swap. But honestly, perhaps that we can argue at the end that we would have been better to do it directly. But we didn’t know if it was the DRS effect or not. And I think we took the tough decision because it’s never easy to ask to Charles or to Lewis to swap. But we did it and they did it on track. I didn’t see a lot of [other] teams doing it.
“We have a general policy and we follow the policy. The question is not to swap and to swap back if you don’t get the guy who is in front of you. The issue at this stage of the race is to understand if the car who is behind is faster than the car who is in the front, or if it’s just the DRS effect. Because it’s the policy of the team that if you ask them to swap. If you don’t ask them to swap, they don’t overtake. If you ask them to swap, it’s because we think that the second car is faster than the first one at this stage of the race. He tried to catch up the guy who was in front. And if we don’t do it, we swap back to respect the initial position. And at this stage of the race, it was clear that we won’t be able to fight Antonelli with Lewis. So we asked them to swap back.”
Race, result –
Hamilton: “I had a good day in general. Eighth doesn’t really look like that. But I feel optimistic for the future. I think this car really does have performance. Something’s holding us back at the moment. We’ve lost performance since China. And it’s there, it’s just we can’t use it. Until we get a fix for that, then this is where we are. In the meantime, we can work on the other stuff. I came from the sim last week, I felt like I generally had a better weekend, to get the third yesterday was a positive. With a better qualifying, I only missed out by half a tenth. Still, for us, we’re battling with the Williams here, so we’re clearly not as quick as we want to be, but Williams did a great job this weekend.”
Leclerc: “Of course, I mean yes, there’s the frustration already that I was fighting for P8 at the time and I was not making any gains. I was really struggling with the car so there’s the frustration of that and then all the rest and it all adds up. So the radio doesn’t always, in this case probably, but the radio is not always the real picture.”
Vasseur: “Lets say yes, if you don’t consider the quali…we lost the weekend and maximum of points in quali, the fastest lap in quali was on scrubbed tyres and not new, so we were not able to get the potential of the new tyres. The lap we did on scrub was not that bad, we were P4/P5 but when the others put a new set, we lost four-five positions. Clearly we have to improve to make the best of the weekend, it is where we are, we have to improve to get the best of the new tyres and to do a step forward. I think the pace, it is always difficult to understand in the pack, but the pace was matching with the Red Bull and Mercedes. I think McLaren was on another planet, we never said that we could have fight with McLaren. But with a better position on the grid, a fight with Max and Mercedes was possible.”
Radio saga –
Hamilton: “It was like ‘make decision, lets go’. It was kind of like [from them] that, ‘we’ll get back to you’…I was like ‘okay!’. I definitely would have said that to Shov [Shovlin] or Bono [Bonnington] before. I lost quite a bit in tyres, which is okay because we were battling for positions. It would have been great if we had done maybe what Valtteri and I did years ago, move and swap and see if I can catch him and if I can’t, then move back. But ultimately, it didn’t work out, whether or not we could overtake Antonelli, at the end of the day we were not quick enough, that’s where the frustration has come from but we keep our heads and keep pushing. It wasn’t even anger, it wasn’t like I was effing and blinding – just make a decision! You’re sitting there on the chair, you’ve got the stuff in front of you, you make the decision quick. For me, I’m like ‘we’re in a panic, we’re trying to keep the car on the track, and a computer thinks fast’.
“I mean, it was all PG at least, right? For sure, I don’t know what you’re going to write, or whether I was disrespectful or whatever, I honestly don’t feel I was. I was like, ‘come on guys, I want to win’. I’ve still got my fire in my belly. I could feel a bit of it really coming up there. I’m not going to apologise for being a fighter. I’m not going to apologise for still wanting it. I know everyone in the team does too. And I truly believe that when we fix some of the problems that we have with the car, we’ll be back in the fight with the Mercedes, with the Red Bulls. It just can’t come quick enough. We’ll try something different in the next race. We’ll keep working on the processes. I look forward to a time when maybe I can fight for a podium, that would be nice.”
Leclerc: “No, no, no. No, I wasn’t [aware of his radio chat]. I was obviously focusing on my race, on my tyres. I was trying to really keep them because I already had the first lap fighting with Carlos with the new tyres and that’s not really what I wanted. So then I had to take care of my tyres. Yeah, I don’t know what the discussions were [about China payback].”
Vasseur: “The radio transmission, first we have to understand that it’s FOM who is managing the delay; it means that sometimes we are asking them something and you have it live half a lap later or one lap later. I already had the case in the past. And then we have tons of information that we are discussing with them about the set-up of the car and so on. And it’s not always easy to ask them to do it before Turn 11 or Turn 17. Honestly, I think that we did what we have to do. You can always argue that it would have been better to do it half a lap before or half a lap later, but honestly, we did the job.”
Post-race talks –
Hamilton: “Fred came to my room [after the race]. I just put my hand on his shoulder, like calm down, don’t be so sensitive. I could have said way worse things on the radio, like some of the things that other people have said in the past. Some of it was sarcasm. You’ve got to understand that we’re under a huge amount of pressure within the cars. You’re never going get the most peaceful messages come through in the heat of battle. It was fine, we will take it.”
Leclerc: “No, we saw each other quickly but he went to change and we didn’t get to talk.”
Vasseur: “[After the race] I had a discussion with Lewis and I can perfectly understand the frustration. They are champions. They want to win races. We are asking them to let their team-mates go. It’s not easy. It’s never easy. And I didn’t see another team do it. That is why we took the responsibility to do it because it’s the policy of the team. We are racing for Ferrari first. Honestly, I think as a team, we did a good job. Again, we can argue that it would have been better to do it half a lap before or half a lap later. But when you are on the pitwall and you have to understand if the car who is behind is faster than the car in front just for DRS or not, it’s not an easy call. It’s always much easier to do it two hours later. We asked them to do it. They did it. The frustration when you are in the car, I can perfectly understand this.
“And we had a discussion and it was much more relaxed. It’s not the story of the day. We did 6-7, instead of 7-6 or 6-7 or 7-6. I would be much more keen to speak about why we finished one minute behind McLaren. What’s happened today is absolutely not an issue for me. I can perfectly understand their frustration when we’re asking something like this. I never saw in my life, and trust me that I had to ask this kind of situation a couple of times in my life, I never saw someone say ‘okay, you can go, it’s not an issue, I’m pleased to let you go’. It’s frustrating because there are the feelings that they gave up a position. We did it just for the benefit of the team, that sometimes it’s working, sometimes not, but we need to use the same goal, and they are perfectly aligned with us. The target was to catch Antonelli, but it is not an issue at the moment on the relationship that we have. My concern is not that he has to speak with TV, it’s that we need to be clear between us.
“In this situation, he has to understand what was my feeling, that he can trust me, I can trust him and the same with Charles. And when I have to take a decision, a decision for Ferrari, there’s the element that you are live. It’s not that you have 30 minutes. You have a look at the data, you have to decide who is the fastest on track, if it’s coming from the DRS or not. Perhaps it was a bit slow, but it took one lap or one and a half to make a decision. This I perfectly understand, it’s always when you are behind you have to think that you have to swap in the next corner and when you are in front, it’s not the DRS at all. Reverse the situation, 10 laps later.”
Here’s radio saga: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-miami-grand-prix-tense-radio-exchanges-as-hamilton-and-leclerc-argue-over-ferrari-strategy.1831240555079632985
Here’s Ferrari against Carlos Sainz: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-miami-grand-prix-leclerc-overtakes-sainz-as-hamilton-slips-past-too-in-double-ferrari-move.1831229041866080409
Here’s Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-miami-grand-prix-hamilton-and-sainz-bang-wheels-in-last-lap-attack-from-the-spaniard-on-the-ferrari.1831231925806633786
Here’s how F1 Miami GP race panned out
