Hamilton Apologizes to Leclerc After the Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Pilot Lewis Hamilton has announced that he will apologize to Charles Leclerc after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The incident occurred on the last lap of the race, when Hamilton tried to return the eighth position to his Ferrari teammate, but miscalculated the maneuver. The Ferrari team’s strategy involved Hamilton using fresher, softer tires in the final stretch of the race. Leclerc was instructed to concede position on lap 43, allowing Hamilton to attack the cars leading the race. When Hamilton failed to overtake Lando Norris for seventh place, he was instructed to let Leclerc regain his position on the last lap.
Hamilton added: “Basically, I lifted off the gas on the straight and braked, but he didn’t pass me for about 0.4 seconds, so it was a miscalculation on my part, so I will apologize to Charles. At the end of the day, it’s only eighth and ninth place. But it won’t happen again.” Leclerc, for his part, commented that the last lap had not followed the team’s protocol, but downplayed the incident due to the positions at stake.“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 percent chance of overtaking, I still had hope.”
Lewis Hamilton
Leclerc added: “It’s more with an eye to the future that, obviously, if we are fighting for more attractive positions, which I hope is the case, I hope we work differently. But on a day like that, I don’t really care.” After starting the race from twelfth position, Hamilton highlighted some positive aspects of the race in 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 place, which was positive,” he said. “I had a good start and I think my pace was generally good, I mean, I went for it, definitely much better, much happier in the car.” Hamilton continued: “It was difficult today to get close to the cars in front, they were very fast, clearly qualifying is very important and we missed it, 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”. Hamilton concluded: “But there are many positive things to take away from this and definitely aspects of the weekend to learn from, which I will try to apply in the next race.”“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
