Frederic Vasseur is not too happy with how media presented the radio exchange between Lewis Hamilton and his race engineer, seeks to discuss with FOM.
Post the F1 Australian GP, not just the motor racing media but the media at large wrote various stories involving Ferrari’s Hamilton and his radio chatter with race engineer Riccardo Adami. Considering it was their first grand prix together, there were some usual back and forth in respectful manner.
Hamilton reiterated the same when asked about it in his Chinese GP media interaction. The grand prix had another set of radio discussions which irritated team boss Vasseur. It related to team orders which the British driver himself initiated, but the FOM broadcast did not present that on the world feed.
It went straight to discussion which made it seem like Ferrari asked him to move away for Charles Leclerc. But they missed out the part where Hamilton told Adami that he wanted to move away for the Monegasque to try and catch George Russell ahead in the podium fight.
“I think this is a joke from…because the first call came from Lewis, that Lewis asked us to swap,” said Vasseur to media. “But to make the show, to create the mess around the situation, they broadcast only the second part of the equation. I’ll discuss with them.
“We have to work for the team, we have to consider what is best for Ferrari and it is agreed between the cars and drivers before the race. It is not an issue. Even the best proof of this is it came from the driver, that ‘okay I am losing the pace, I am keen to swap’.”
When pressed further to understand if this was probably deliberate from FOM to who half message, Vasseur was all smiles but also frustrated how the media handled things in Australia and how they were to take the China topic too. He wasn’t blaming the media, but wanted to explain the nuances.
“I don’t want to be harsh with all of you, but you made a huge storyline and a huge mess in Australia on the message between the engineer and Lewis (laughs),” continued Vasseur. “When Lewis came back to the briefing room he said to his engineer ‘good job’. But because they are discussing how to use K1 and ‘don’t speak when I’m in the fight’, I had tons of questions: ‘Ah is it a mess?’ But no, that’s life.
“And we are just there to get performance. You have to know each other, I don’t want to be polemic. You can’t imagine the number of questions that I had about this from the garage when I came here. It’s all about the same thing: ‘Is it a mess?!’ No, it’s Lewis who asked to swap. I’m not even sure you will have this kind of situation 10 times during the season in other teams.
“And honestly from the pitwall we really appreciated the call from Lewis to say, ‘Guys I’m losing the pace, I’m keen to swap’. And then it took us few laps to ask him to swap with Charles and then the pace was back. We said to stay like this little bit, but then he said no, I don’t have the pace, I swap. Honestly as a team, the collaboration between the two guys is mega!
“I can’t complain a single second about something. Now, I understand your question, and you have to ask the question to Stefano not to me, because I’m not in charge of the broadcast,” summed up Vasseur, as various media shared a generic response from F1 when they were asked about missing crucial radio discussion between Hamilton and his race engineer.
“There was absolutely no intention of presenting a misleading narrative regarding the Ferrari team radio,” it said to media including Planet Network. “Due to other situations developing during the race the message from Lewis was not played but this was not intentional.”
Here’s news on Dino Beganovic getting FP1 drive
Here’s Frederic Vasseur and drivers on Chinese GP
Here’s information on Ferrari DQ
