Did Hamilton really balk at letting Leclerc through in China?

Lewis Hamilton was he reluctant to accept the instruction to let him pass? Charles Leclerc during the Chinese Grand Prix? That's what many people concluded after listening to the live radio broadcasts during the race. Let's get back to the facts: on lap 20, the Englishman's new engineer, Riccardo Adami, asked his driver to swap positions with his teammate, who was faster despite his broken front wing. The order was not immediately carried out by the Briton, who felt that the number 16 was not yet close enough to carry out the maneuver without wasting time.

The turns go by, the tension rises and Leclerc is getting impatient with Bryan Bozzi, his engineer: « It's a shame, my rhythm is good ». It was finally at the first corner of the following lap that the Englishman collaborated and let the Monegasque slip away. Faced with this situation, the late cooperation of the seven-time world champion could have been interpreted as surly behavior. However, this version of the story is incomplete and the resulting interpretation is therefore biased.

Incomplete dissemination of exchanges

During the races, the drivers of Formula 1 communicate a lot with their engineers. Not all radio exchanges are broadcast live to avoid audio clutter, and only a few dialogues, the most relevant according to Formula One Management (FOM), are broadcast.

Regarding the case Ferrari This weekend, the first exchanges between Hamilton and his team were not broadcast live. However, it was the Stevenage native who, aware of his difficulties, proposed the maneuver: " I think I'll let Charles go because I'm struggling (with the pace).", he told his engineers. Just one missed radio broadcast and the Briton goes from an altruist maximizing a team result to a reluctant and selfish potential teammate...

« I think this is a FOM joke." reacted an annoyed Frédéric Vasseur to these broadcast choices. The director of the Ferrari team, already very irritated by the disqualification of his two cars after the race, breath : "The first call came from Lewis. But to make a show of it, they changed the situation by only broadcasting the second part of the radio exchange." "Accustomed" to this kind of disinformation, the Frenchman does not intend to stop there: "I will talk to them."

This is not the first time that teams have been confronted with the FOM's choices. In 2024, following the first free practice session of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso expressed his dissatisfaction with the choice of broadcasts: “ I mentioned a lot of positive things on the radio during the session, but FOM only highlights the bad things and the controversies." 

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