Lewis Hamilton will apologize to Charles Leclerc after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, following a maneuver on the last lap that generated controversy.
The incident occurred when Hamilton was trying to give back the eighth position to his Ferrari teammate.
The situation arose after the Ferrari team ordered Hamilton to yield the position to Leclerc, following a previous exchange of positions ten laps earlier.
Hamilton’s strategy put him on fresher, softer tires for the final stretch of the race, while Leclerc was ordered to let Hamilton pass on lap 43 so that he could try to attack the cars ahead.
Unable to overtake Lando Norris and placing in seventh place, Hamilton received the instruction to let Leclerc pass on the last lap.
Adami added: “This is the last lap. Behind him is Hadjar, two seconds behind, Charles 1.5 seconds away. Let him pass.” Hamilton slowed down as he approached the finish line, but crossed 0.464 seconds ahead of Leclerc, securing eighth place. “In the end, the message came to me very late,” explained Hamilton, “and I was focused on the car in front, although there was a 0.001 percent chance of overtaking, I still had hope.” “Basically, I lifted my foot on the straight and braked, but he didn’t take advantage of it by 0.4 seconds, so it was a miscalculation on my part, so I will apologize to Charles.” “At the end of the day, they are only in eighth and ninth place. But it won’t happen again.” Leclerc commented that the last lap did not adhere to the team’s protocol, but downplayed the incident, considering the positions at stake. “There are rules that we know we have to work with and today maybe those rules were not respected, but no… I mean, P8 and P9 or P9 and P8, that’s not something that really interests me,” he said. “Moreover, in the future, obviously, if we are fighting for more important positions, which I hope is the case, I hope we work differently. But on a day like that, I really don’t care.” After starting the race from 12th on the grid, Hamilton highlighted some positives from Baku, even though the final result did not meet Ferrari’s expectations. “Definitely not where we want to be, obviously a disappointing result at the end of the day, but I moved forward from 12th, which was positive,” he said. “I had a good start and I think my pace was generally good, I mean, I was pushing hard, I was definitely much better, much happier with the car.” “It was difficult today to close the distance with the cars in front, they were very fast, clearly 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, yeah.” “But there are many positive aspects to take from it, and definitely things to learn from the weekend, which I will try to apply in the next one.”“You can let Charles pass, he’s a second and a half behind you,” his race engineer, Ricardo Adami, told Hamilton.
Ricardo Adami
