Controversial management
We are now in the week of the Monza GP, but in the F1 paddock there is still discussion about what happened in Zandvoort. While Mercedes issued the first explicit team order aimed at favoring Andrea Kimi Antonelli over George Russell – albeit in a particular race context – at Ferrari Lewis Hamilton complained a lot to the team for not having received a ‘clear track’ when he found himself behind teammate Charles Leclerc for two laps, who was slower than him at that moment and was following a different race strategy.
Hamilton via radio was very harsh with the team, explicitly criticizing both the team’s strategy and the management of the situation. The Englishman himself probably realized he had gone too far in his complaints, so much so that the day after the race he issued a social media apology message. In the latest episode of the podcast The Red Flags, former Haas team principal Gunther Steiner, now an ‘external’ commentator on what happens in the Circus, also condemned Hamilton’s behavior.
Hamilton did not do himself a favor
“I don’t think Lewis did himself a favor by being so critical – observed the Merano manager – because when you are sitting at the pit wall and hear those words you think: ‘Oh, this guy is really trying to make too much of a scene. He no longer has in mind that there is a team here’. Lewis could have said: ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be better if you let me pass, I’m faster’, instead of saying: ‘Hey, you made me lose time’”.
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If the tone of Hamilton’s team radio did not please Steiner, it must be said that the former Haas boss also acknowledged how Ferrari did not manage that specific moment of the race with sufficient attention: “Obviously, [the management] was not as well organized as Mercedes’. They were well organized – Steiner observed – they had already discussed that possible situation before starting and, obviously, that discussion was not as heated as what happened at Ferrari, because when you go to the drivers before the race and explain how things stand it’s different. I think in that case [Ferrari] did not operate with the same level of detail as Mercedes and this caused what happened“.
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