Elkann turns up the heat after Brazil as Doornbos takes aim at Hamilton: ‘He doesn’t deliver anything for it’
Ferrari’s Sunday was a split-screen study in contrasts. In Bahrain, the marque’s WEC squad tied a bow on a superb season with both the Manufacturers’ crown and the drivers’ title for Antonio Giovinazzi, Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado. In São Paulo, the Scuderia’s F1 effort limped away with a double DNF for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton and just six points across the weekend. Two worlds, one crestfallen chairman.
John Elkann didn’t sugarcoat it. Calling Brazil a “huge disappointment”, he praised the pit crew and engineers then fired a very public shot across the bow of the rest of the operation. “The rest is not up to par,” he said, adding that his drivers “need to focus on driving, talk less,” with second in the Constructors’ still on the table.
The message lit up the paddock. Jenson Button’s response was as neat as one of his Monaco apexes: “Maybe John should lead by example.” Karun Chandhok pointed elsewhere, arguing the “car hasn’t been fast enough,” not the men behind the wheel. But Robert Doornbos sided with Elkann and went further, turning his sights on Hamilton’s stuttering first season in red.
“Hamilton has said in the media that he is living in a nightmare,” Doornbos told De Stamtafel. “It’s dramatic and terrible… John Elkann has said that the drivers should talk less and accelerate. Second place among the Constructors is still achievable.” Then came the jab that will sting in Maranello’s glass corridors: “They are happy to transfer 2.5 million to Hamilton every weekend, but he doesn’t deliver anything for it.”
It’s the brutal arithmetic of top-level sport. Hamilton, a seven-time World Champion who’s rarely gone a season without silverware, stands on the brink of an unthinkable first year at Ferrari without a single podium. For any driver, that’s a gut-punch. For Hamilton in Ferrari red, it’s seismic. He’s more than aware of it.
“I mean this is a nightmare,” he told Sky after Brazil. “Been living here for a while. Between the dream of driving for this amazing team and then the nightmare of the results we’ve had… it’s challenging.” He wasn’t out of fight, though. “Tomorrow I’ll get back up. I’ll keep training, keep working with the team… I’ll come back as strong as I can in the next race.”
If there’s a thread to grab, it’s unity — Elkann’s punchy “talk less” line was followed by a more conciliatory reminder that “Ferrari wins when it is united,” pointing directly at the WEC banner they’ve just hung. Leclerc and Hamilton echoed that with coordinated social posts after the chairman’s comments, a public show that the drivers are at least aligned.
Behind the optics, the real work is fiddlier. Ferrari’s pit stops have been tidy, their mechanics routinely among the quickest on the lane. There’s clear graft on the engineering side too. What’s missing is that glue-and-needle consistency on race day: a car that expands the operating window, strategy calls that land, drivers with a platform to attack rather than survive. That’s not a Hamilton problem or a Leclerc problem; it’s the cocktail.
Doornbos argues next season becomes the referendum. “He has to hope that Ferrari has built a cannon of an engine,” he said. “They really have to come up with a miracle. If he beats Charles Leclerc, he will be the hero of Italy again, so it’s a thin line, but it doesn’t really hold up yet.” Strip out the tabloid tang and there’s a fair point: even in a year of bruises, intra-team momentum matters. Beat your teammate and you hold the narrative. Don’t, and the pressure multiplies.
Elkann’s warning shot lands in that context. Ferrari’s ceiling is still high enough that finishing second overall remains plausible, but Brazil was a reminder of how slim the margin for error is when you’re chasing Red Bull and fending off the rest. Every weekend is a knife-edge between P2 and picking gravel out of the brake ducts.
The noise will keep humming — that’s Ferrari’s eternal weather. The trick now is to put a lid on the melodrama and build a car and a weekend rhythm that let Hamilton and Leclerc do exactly what their boss asked: talk less, drive more, and let the lap time answer back.
There’s a thin line between nightmare and redemption in Italy. Everyone at Maranello knows it. The question is whether they can walk it before the season writes its own ending.
