Totally absord:Ferrari boss sends brutal response to untelevised lewis Hamilton radio message accusing him of……read more
Are you upset with me?’ – Ferrari boss responds to untelevised Lewis Hamilton radio message
Seemingly at odds with Riccardo Adami at the Monaco Grand Prix, and not for the first time this season, Fred Vasseur insists all is well between Lewis Hamilton and his race engineer.
Just eight races into Hamilton’s first season as a Ferrari driver, the seven-time World Champion and Adami appear, at least from the outside, to be struggling to gel as a partnership.
Lewis Hamilton: ‘Are you upset with me or something?’
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
There have been several terse exchanges, to the point that journalists pointed out to Hamilton after his Miami troubles that no one recalled him speaking to his Mercedes engineer, Peter Bonnington, as he did to Adami with his “tea break” jab.
He replied to that: “I definitely have said that to Shovlin or Bono once before.”
But while Hamilton put that day’s radio tension down to having a “fire in my belly”, wanting a podium and even went as far as to tell team principal Vasseur “don’t be so sensitive”, the Briton’s radio communication with Adami continues to raise eyebrows.
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After the jubilation of his Imola recovery, 12th on the grid to fourth at the chequered flag, Hamilton was clearly not happy with Adami’s responses at the Monaco Grand Prix.
And Adami, it would seem, wasn’t happy with his driver.
Heading into the closing laps at the Monte Carlo street circuit where he was running fifth, Hamilton asked Adami: “Are they still ahead by a minute?”
Told by Adami that those ahead were simply “fighting”, Hamilton replied: “You’re not answering the question. But it doesn’t really matter, I’m just asking, am I a minute behind or?”
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Adami: “Forty-eight seconds.”
After the race finished, Hamilton received only silence from Adami and asked: “Are you upset with me or something?”
There was no reply from Adami.
Hamilton finished the race in fifth place, 51 seconds down on race winner Lando Norris, and was quizzed about his radio exchanges with Adami which also included the engineer telling him that the race is “ours.”
“The information wasn’t exactly that clear,” he told Sky F1. “I didn’t really understand ‘this is our race.’
“I didn’t know what I was fighting for. Was I fighting for the next spot ahead?
“But, in actual fact, when I look at the data I wasn’t anywhere near any of the guys up front. I used up my tyres a lot in that moment but I was so far away from them anyway.”
Their radio exchanges, or post-Monaco lack thereof, have once again brought their fledgling relationship into the spotlight.
Vasseur insists there are no hard feelings, Adami just didn’t reply because of where Hamilton was on the track at the time.
“When the driver is asking something between Turn 1 and 3, we have to wait [until] the tunnel to reply, to avoid to speak with him during the corners,” Vasseur told media including PlanetF1.com.
“It’s not that we are sleeping, it’s not that we are having a beer on the pit wall, it’s just because we have a section of the track, where we agreed before to speak with him.
“Honestly, it’s not a tension that the guy is asking something. He’s between the wall, he’s under pressure, he’s fighting, he’s at 300kph between the walls and I am perfectly fine with it.
“I spoke with him after the race, he was not upset at all.”
Hamilton lost further ground to championship leader Oscar Piastri in Monaco and now trails the McLaren driver by 63 points to 161 a third of the way into the F1 2025 championship.
The 40-year-old says there wasn’t much else he could do on Sunday.
“For me, I was kind of in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
“Obviously, with the penalty that I had [a three-place grid drop for impeding Max Verstappen in qualifying], I started seventh, I was behind two cars for some time, and then managed to clear them, and then I was just in no man’s land after that.
“I think the gap was relatively big and I was really not racing anyone. I needed a Safety Car or something to come into play, but it didn’t happen.”
After the race finished, Hamilton received only silence from Adami and asked: “Are you upset with me or something?”
There was no reply from Adami.
Hamilton finished the race in fifth place, 51 seconds down on race winner Lando Norris, and was quizzed about his radio exchanges with Adami which also included the engineer telling him that the race is “ours.”
“The information wasn’t exactly that clear,” he told Sky F1. “I didn’t really understand ‘this is our race.’
“I didn’t know what I was fighting for. Was I fighting for the next spot ahead?
“But, in actual fact, when I look at the data I wasn’t anywhere near any of the guys up front. I used up my tyres a lot in that moment but I was so far away from them anyway.”
Vasseur insists there are no hard feelings, Adami just didn’t reply because of where Hamilton was on the track at the time.
“When the driver is asking something between Turn 1 and 3, we have to wait [until] the tunnel to reply, to avoid to speak with him during the corners,” Vasseur told media including PlanetF1.com.
“It’s not that we are sleeping, it’s not that we are having a beer on the pit wall, it’s just because we have a section of the track, where we agreed before to speak with him.
“Honestly, it’s not a tension that the guy is asking something. He’s between the wall, he’s under pressure, he’s fighting, he’s at 300kph between the walls and I am perfectly fine with it.
“I spoke with him after the race, he was not upset at all.”
Hamilton lost further ground to championship leader Oscar Piastri in Monaco and now trails the McLaren driver by 63 points to 161 a third of the way into the F1 2025 championship.
The 40-year-old says there wasn’t much else he could do on Sunday.
“For me, I was kind of in the middle of nowhere,” he said.
“Obviously, with the penalty that I had [a three-place grid drop for impeding Max Verstappen in qualifying], I started seventh, I was behind two cars for some time, and then managed to clear them, and then I was just in no man’s land after that.
“I think the gap was relatively big and I was really not racing anyone. I needed a Safety Car or something to come into play, but it didn’t happen.”