Hamilton apologizes to Leclerc after error in Azerbaijan GP

Lewis Hamilton admitted 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. The situation arose after Ferrari’s pit wall asked Hamilton to concede position to Leclerc before the end of the race, after both cars had swapped positions ten laps earlier. Hamilton’s strategy allowed him to have fresher, softer tires in the final stretch, and Leclerc was asked to move aside 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.Hamilton’s race engineer, Ricardo Adami, told him: “You can let Charles pass, he’s a second and a half behind you.” 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 the cars 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 and was focused on the car in front of me, although there was a 0.001 percent chance of overtaking, I still had hope.

Lewis Hamilton

As explained by the British driver: “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.” “At the end of the day, it’s only eighth and ninth. But it won’t happen again.” Leclerc commented that the last lap did not adhere to the team’s protocol, but downplayed the incident based on the positions at stake.

There are rules we know we have to work with and today maybe those rules weren’t respected, but no… I mean, P8 and P9 or P9 and P8, that’s not something that really interests me.

Charles Leclerc

“Moreover, in the future, obviously, if we are fighting for more attractive 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 twelfth 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. I had a good start and I think my pace was generally good, I mean, I was on it, I was definitely much better, much happier in the car.

Lewis Hamilton

“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 we look at Williams, where [[Carlos Sainz](http://www.espn.com/rpm/driver?seriesId=6&driverId=4686)Carlos Sainz qualified 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.”