Hamilton opposes Team orders
Stress at Ferrari: “It’s just stupid”
21.09.2025 – 7:56 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Ferrari experiences a difficult Sunday at the race in Baku. Then Lewis Hamilton opposes a team order – and causes a bad mood.
Record world champion Lewis Hamilton caused an internal twist at Ferrari at Azerbaijan’s Grand Prix in Baku. In the final phase of the race, the seven -time world champion was actually in ninth place behind his team -mate Charles Leclerc. But Hamilton had the fresher tires.
So the team decided to wave Hamilton past Leclerc without a fight in order to have him hunt for McLaren-Pilot Lando Norris in seventh place. The clear agreement: If Hamilton does not succeed in overtaking Norris, he has to advance Leclerc again.
This is exactly this scenario: Hamilton had not managed to overtake Norris until the last round. His racing engineer Riccardo Adami therefore sparked the 40-year-old on the long start-and-goal line: “Leave Charles. He is one and a half seconds behind you. This is the last round.”
Hamilton braked somewhat, but no longer let Leclerc pass in front of the finish line. In the end, he stayed eighth with a little less than half a second. The Sky commentator duo Sascha Roos and Ralf Schumacher initially suspected.
However, Leclerc intended his teammate. After the finishing passage, he supposedly sparkled: “I don’t really care, it’s just about eighth place. So it’s okay, he can look forward to this eighth place.” Then he became clear: “It’s just stupid because it is not fair.”
Hamilton and Leclerc are in the driver’s ranking of the World Cup immediately in a row. Leclerc is fifth with 165 points, Hamilton is in sixth place with 121 points.