Lewis Hamilton doesn’t feel good to not be in F1 championship contention, as Frederic Vasseur adds further on the media reports surrounding Ferrari team.
It has been a mixed run for Hamilton with Ferrari so far. He has had highs and also lows as he is still getting to grips with the team and also the car on the whole. The last two weekends has been tough considering that he has to run carrying some sort of damage.
They kept the Barcelona issue a secret, while in Canada, he ran over a groundhog which damage his floor. Irrespective of issues, Hamilton has had a decent run so far with Ferrari scoring good points. Of course, he is disappointed that he is not fighting regularly for wins or podiums.
But it is all part of foundation building for the F1 seasons to come, especially 2026. “I am okay, I think what all you guys don’t see is what’s happening in the background,” said Hamilton to media. “And there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot that needs improving. A lot of things need to be changed. For me, I know we’re not fighting for a win this year.
“I know we’re not in the championship, which is not a great feeling. And also I know I’m getting accustomed to working with the team, foundation building, and trying to steer them to make those changes so that next year we can have a car that can win and we can then fight and be consistent and have strategy and all those different things. So with that in mind, I’m OK.
“But obviously I want to win. And so when you’re not competing at the front, you’re not fighting for podiums, I’m definitely a little bit gutted with that. I was hoping in Canada, I’d have a fight for a podium. But we don’t have the performance currently. So hopefully with an upgrade maybe at some stage we’ll be a bit more, a bit sharper,” summed up Hamilton.
Leading into Canada weekend, Ferrari were surrounded by news of Vasseur under scrutiny and Charles Leclerc potentially looking at options – both of which was put down sternly during the weekend. The Frenchman was furious during the press conference about the topic.
Vasseur reiterated his thoughts after the weekend where he felt the reports about a person leaving or joining is not good for a F1 team, since onus is on him to clarify the situation. He feels it is harsh on the employees as they are in constant fear about loosing his/her job, reading various rumours.
“I can be a bit more angry,” joked Vasseur. He added: “Calm down, we’ll have to wait for the prize on Monday, but again, to close this chapter, because I don’t want to put oil on the system, is that for myself, when I signed at Ferrari, I was perfectly aware of this, that I can’t blame someone except myself, that if I didn’t want to have this kind of story, it was better to stay out.
“But it’s very, very harsh for the team, for the 1,500 people, to have your name spread like this in the press, to say, ‘OK, you have to change this one’. Because it’s not just a name or a position, it’s someone with a family, and now each Monday, I have people coming in my office, ‘is it true’? ‘No, no, it’s not true, stay calm’. You know that I spoke about the story with Balbo on Friday, because last year Balbo was a good example.
“It was in the press that we signed Balbo, but I had to Google Balbo because I didn’t know the face of the guy, and I never met him before. But you can imagine that Diego, who is the head of Aero, when he saw something like this in the press, it’s quite harsh for him, because he doesn’t know if it’s true or not, and this is putting a kind of, tension is not the right word, but entropy or distraction into the team, and at the end of the day, we are in a competition with other teams, and if we are distracted or not focused on the right thing, that we will lose the competition.
“This is true for us, but it’s true for everybody, we have to make some choices on the, what is the allocation for 2025, the allocation for 2026, but honestly it’s absolutely not the issue for us today, the issue on the weekend for me, it’s not the potential of the car, it’s not the potential of Lewis or Charles, it’s the execution, the execution, the global execution, and this is not, absolutely not linked to the split between 2026 and 2025, right?,” summed up Vasseur.
Here’s Ferrari trio on Spanish GP
Here’s Ferrari trio on media reports
