Hamilton apologizes to Leclerc after a confusing end in Azerbaijan

Hamilton Apologizes to Leclerc After the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton has stated that he will apologize to Charles Leclerc after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, following a mistake in his attempt to return the eighth position to his Ferrari teammate on the last lap of the race. Hamilton’s strategy put him on newer, softer tires for the final stint, and Leclerc was ordered to concede position on lap 43 to allow his teammate to attack the cars ahead in the final stages of the race. When Hamilton couldn’t overtake Lando Norris for seventh place, he was told to let Leclerc pass on the last lap.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc finished eighth and ninth in the race.

“You can let Charles pass, he’s a second and a half behind you,” his race engineer, Ricardo Adami, told Hamilton.

Ricardo Adami

Adami added: “This is the last lap. Behind him is Hadjar, two seconds behind, Charles 1.5 seconds behind. Let him pass.” Hamilton slowed down as he approached the finish line, but crossed 0.464 seconds ahead of Leclerc to secure eighth place.

“In the end, I received the message very late,” explained Hamilton, “and I was focused on the car in front, although there was a 0.001% chance of overtaking, I still had hope.”

Lewis Hamilton

“Basically, I lifted off the throttle on the straight and braked, but he didn’t take advantage of it for about 0.4 seconds, so it was a miscalculation on my part, so I will apologize to Charles.” “After all, they are only in eighth and ninth place. But it won’t happen again.” Leclerc said the last lap had not been in line with the team’s protocol, but downplayed the incident based on 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.

Charles Leclerc

“Moreover, looking ahead, obviously, if we are fighting for sexier positions, which I hope is the case, I hope we will work in a different way. But on a day like that, I really don’t care.” After starting the race from 12th on the grid, Hamilton said there were some positives in Baku, even if the final result didn’t 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 place, which was positive,” he said. “I had a good start, and I think my pace was generally good, I mean, I was on top, definitely much better, much happier with the car.” “It was difficult today to get close to the cars in front, they were very fast, clearly qualifying is very important, and we missed that, if you look at the 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 things to take from it, and definitely things to take from the weekend, which I will try to take to the next one.”