Leclerc bristles at late Ferrari swap as Hamilton misses finish-line handback: “He can enjoy that P8”
The cameras didn’t catch it, but the radio did. In the closing laps of a tense, tactical Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc seethed as a late Ferrari team-orders plan unraveled on the run to the chequered flag — and Lewis Hamilton, by four tenths of a second, didn’t give the place back.
The flashpoint came after Ferrari asked Leclerc to move aside on Lap 42 of 51. Hamilton, on mediums 17 laps fresher than Leclerc’s hards, was waved through at Turn 1 to have a crack at the pack ahead — Lando Norris, Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson among them. It was pragmatic, if not romantic: ride the tyre offset, try to nick something more.
Only, nothing more arrived. As Lap 50 ticked over, Leclerc radioed his engineer Bryan Bozzi to ask if the swap would be reversed if Hamilton couldn’t make ground. The answer — after a brief pause — came at the start of the final tour: yes, back on the main straight.
On Hamilton’s side, Riccardo Adami laid it out: let Charles by before the line, with a reminder that Isack Hadjar was bearing down on the pair. Hamilton lifted, even dabbed the brakes, but misjudged it. The Ferrari number 44 crossed the line 0.464s ahead of the number 16. “F**k,” Hamilton muttered as the flag fell.
Leclerc’s response veered between ice and irritation. “I don’t really care. It’s for an eighth place, so… it’s OK. He can enjoy that P8,” he said, before adding the sting: “It’s just stupid because it’s not fair.” Earlier, as the plan was taking shape, he’d already pushed for clarity: if there’s no gain, we swap back, right?
Speaking afterwards, Leclerc kept the temperature in check publicly, hinting only that “rules were not respected,” and stressing the low-stakes optics — eighth versus ninth — after a rough weekend. But the untelevised messages gave away the edge.
Hamilton, in his first season in red and Leclerc’s third full-time Ferrari teammate, fronted up. “Charles was gracious to let me by,” he said. “At the end, I got the message really late and I was zoned in on the car in front, even though there was basically no chance. I did lift and actually braked, but I missed it by four tenths. That was a misjudgement from myself. So I apologise to Charles. At the end of the day, it’s eighth and ninth.”
Team boss Fred Vasseur backed the call to invert in the first place, pointing to Hamilton’s tyre advantage and Leclerc wrestling a recovery-system issue. The outcome, he conceded, wasn’t what Ferrari intended. “We asked to swap back and it looks like Lewis had a misjudgement on the position of the start/finish line.”
None of it changes the points haul by much, but don’t kid yourself that it doesn’t matter inside a team still calibrating its new axis. P8 versus P9 is a footnote on paper; on the pit wall and in the garage, the currency is trust and follow-through. You can hear it in the way Leclerc framed it: not about the number, about the principle.
There was, at least, a lighter coda on Leclerc’s radio. “Is Carlos on the podium?” he asked of his former teammate. The answer: yes — P3 for Carlos Sainz, now in Williams blue, a bright result on a day Ferrari’s execution got tangled.
This is the new reality at Maranello in 2025. Leclerc remains the long-term anchor; Hamilton brings a heavyweight’s instincts and, on days like Baku, the willingness to roll the dice. Ferrari tried to play both hands. The plan was sound. The finish-line timing wasn’t.
The next time they try it, you suspect everyone will know exactly where that line is. And who has to be in front of it.
