Hamilton Apologizes to Leclerc After the Azerbaijan GP
Lewis Hamilton has announced that he will apologize to Charles Leclerc after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, following a mistake in the attempt to return the eighth position to his Ferrari teammate during the last lap of the race. Hamilton’s strategy positioned him with fresher, softer tires in the final stretch of the race. Leclerc was instructed to concede his position on lap 43 to allow his teammate to attack the cars leading in the final stages. When Hamilton couldn’t overtake Lando Norris for seventh place, he was told to let Leclerc regain the position on the last lap.
Leclerc commented that the last lap did not adhere to the team’s protocol, but downplayed the incident due to the positions at stake.In the end, I received the message very late and was focused on the car in front, although there was a 0.001% chance of overtaking, I still had hope. Basically, I lifted off the throttle on the straight and braked, but it got away from me by 0.4 seconds, so it was a bad decision on my part, so I will apologize to Charles. In the end, it’s only eighth and ninth. But it won’t happen again.
Lewis Hamilton
After starting the race from 12th position on the grid, Hamilton highlighted positive aspects of his performance in Baku, despite the final result not meeting expectations. Hamilton said: “Definitely not where we want to be, obviously a disappointing result at the end of the day, but I moved forward from 12th place, which was positive. I had a good start and I think my pace was generally good, I was on top, definitely much better, much happier in the car.” “It was difficult today to close the gap with the cars in front, they were very fast, obviously qualifying is very important, and we missed that, if you look at Williams, where they qualified [[Carlos Sainz](https://www.espn.com/rpm/driver?seriesId=6&driverId=4686)Carlos Sainz was second] and they finished there [in third], so, yes.” “But there are many positive aspects to take from it, and definitely things to take from the weekend, which I will try to take to the next race.”There are rules we know we have to work with and today maybe they weren’t respected, but no… P8 and P9 or P9 and P8, that’s not something that really interests me. Moreover, in the future, obviously, if we are fighting for more interesting positions, which I hope is the case, I hope we work differently. But on a day like that, I don’t really care.
Charles Leclerc
