Hamilton apologizes to Leclerc after error in Azerbaijan GP

Hamilton Apologizes to Leclerc after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix

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 on the last lap of the race. Hamilton’s strategy put him on fresher, softer tires for the final stint. Leclerc was instructed 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.Hamilton’s race engineer, Ricardo Adami, told him: “You can let Charles pass, he’s a second and a half behind you. This is the last lap.” Hamilton slowed down as he approached the finish line, but crossed 0.464 seconds ahead of Leclerc, securing eighth place.

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 lost it by about 0.4 seconds, so it was a miscalculation on my part, so I will apologize to Charles.

Lewis Hamilton

Leclerc, for his part, 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. Moreover, looking ahead, obviously, if we are fighting for more interesting positions, which I hope is the case, I hope we work in a different way. But on a day like that, I don’t really care.

Charles Leclerc

Hamilton, after starting the race from 12th position on the grid, highlighted some positive aspects of Baku, even though the final result did not meet 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, I was definitely much better, much happier with the car.