Ferrari president John Elkann told Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton this Monday (10) to talk less and focus more on driving, after a disastrous weekend for the Italian Formula 1 team in Brazil.
Ferrari suffered a double retirement in São Paulo on Sunday (9), its third race of the season without either driver scoring points.
Also over the weekend, in Bahrain, Ferrari won the World Endurance Championship in both the driver and team categories.
Speaking after an Olympic sponsorship event in Rome, Elkann compared the Le Mans 24 Hours winners’ emotional triumph to the disappointment in Brazil and appeared to question the unity of the F1 team.
He told reporters that the mechanics and engineers were doing their jobs well and had improved the car, but “if we look at the rest, it’s not up to par.”
“And we definitely have drivers who need to focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races to go and get second place [no campeonato] It’s not impossible,” said Elkann.
“We need drivers who don’t think about themselves, but who think about Ferrari,” he added. “In Bahrain we won the WEC title. When Ferrari is united, we get results.”
Ferrari, runner-up to McLaren last season, fell from second to fourth in the constructors’ championship — behind champions McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull — and both drivers expressed frustration.
Seven-times world champion Hamilton, who joined from Mercedes in January, said after Sunday’s race at Interlagos that his dream of driving for Ferrari had also become something of a nightmare.
“I have lived [esse pesadelo] for some time now, with a constant oscillation between living the dream of driving for this incredible team and disastrous results.”
The Briton is yet to reach the podium in 21 races, although he did win a sprint race in China in March.
Hamilton retired from Sunday’s race just after the halfway mark after two collisions on the first lap left his car severely damaged. He received a five-second penalty for one of them.
Leclerc was forced to abandon the race in a three-way battle for second place with Italian Kimi Antonelli, second for Mercedes, and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.
The Monegasque — now in his seventh year at Maranello and fully integrated with Ferrari — came fifth and Hamilton seventh in Saturday’s sprint race (8).
