There were tense moments during the Miami GP between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc: their frustration came through on the team radio. The two Ferrari drivers were battling for seventh place; ahead of them was the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli.
At a certain point in the race, car #44 sent a veiled message: if his teammate couldn’t catch the rival, he would try himself. This implied a swap of positions.
“How far are the others from Charles? I’m burning up my tyres behind him,” asked Lewis Hamilton. “Understood. Antonelli is 6 seconds ahead of Charles,” replied his race engineer Riccardo Adami.
After a while, the Briton insisted again: “So you want me to just sit here [behind Charles] for the whole race?” “I’ll get back to you,” replied Adami. The engineer then came back with another team radio message: “I want you to stay within DRS of Charles. Keep it up.”
Lewis Hamilton didn’t take the instruction well: “You guys are… This is not good teamwork. And that’s all I’m going to say!”
“Let’s swap the cars, let’s swap…” Riccardo Adami began, but Lewis Hamilton interrupted: “Ah! Take a tea break while you’re at it! Come on!”
At that point, Ferrari instructed both drivers to swap positions. Bryan Bozzi then informed Charles Leclerc: “Lewis has not been informed, we’ll swap the cars at Turn 17 now.”
However, the swap did not take place, so Leclerc’s race engineer contacted him again, saying they would do it on the next lap.
“Alright, let’s see Antonelli, let’s try to catch him. Otherwise we’ll lose more time than anything. We’ll discuss this after the race,” replied car #16.
After the exchange, the position swap eventually happened and Lewis Hamilton moved up to seventh. Despite the swap, the Briton was still unable to close in on Kimi Antonelli. So he had to return the position to his teammate. Ferrari finished the race in seventh and eighth place.
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