"That's life": Ferrari boss on Lewis Hamilton -Charles Leclerc mid-race strategic mess
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur justified the strategic mess between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc during the 2025 Miami Grand Prix, saying, "This is life," and mistakes happen. He argued that the decision to swap the drivers was meant to benefit the team.
The 2025 Miami Grand Prix turned into a nightmare for the Scuderia team as a strategic mishap ruined Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc's race. On lap 34, the British driver asked for a swap to go ahead of the Monegasque at P7, as he was faster on medium tires.
However, the team delayed the swap for four laps, resulting in tire wear. Moreover, on lap 52, the Italian team asked Hamilton to swap again, this time by letting Leclerc go through to P7. While their goal was to chase Kimi Antonelli for P6, both drivers overheated their tires due to delay and confusion in team orders and settled for P7 (Leclerc) and P8 (Hamilton).
Amid controversy, the Ferrari team principal, Fred Vasseur, justified the team orders, saying that things didn't always go as planned. He argued that Leclerc was swapped back to P7 on lap 52 to benefit the team, a decision that backfired in hindsight.
Talking to the media, he said:
"This is life. I spoke with him [Hamilton], and he was not frustrated at all. It's never easy to ask them to swap, and this I perfectly understand that. We did it for the benefit of the team to try to catch up to Antonelli. We asked Lewis to go [P7] and Charles to swap [P8] because Lewis was with medium tires. When we saw we wouldn't be able to do it [chase Antonelli], we asked them to swap back."
However, Lewis Hamilton's heated radio messages told a different story. He snapped back at his race engineer and sarcastically taunted the team for delaying his first swap request.
Lewis Hamilton calmed down Fred Vasseur after the Ferrari disaster in Miami
Lewis Hamilton wasn't holding back on his frustration after confusing team orders ruined his race in Miami. Through radio messages, he sarcastically criticized the strategy that kept both him and Charles Leclerc from chasing Kimi Antonelli.
Interestingly, after the race, Hamilton apparently told Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur to calm down and not be sensitive to his radio messages. Talking to the media, he said, via Crash.net:
“Fred came to my room. I just put my hand on his shoulder and was like, Dude, calm down. Don’t be so sensitive. I could have said way worse things on the radio. You hear some of the things others have said in the past; some of it was sarcasm. Look, you’ve got to understand we’re under a huge amount of pressure within the car. You’re never going to get the most peaceful messages coming through in the heat of the battle. And yeah, it was fine. We said we’ll take it."
Hamilton also refused to apologize to Ferrari, as he said he was being a fighter, and nothing he said on the radio was disrespectful in his eyes.