Vasseur plays down Hamilton–Leclerc swap mix‑up as Ferrari’s Baku promise fizzles
Ferrari walked into Saturday in Baku riding the high of a Friday 1-2. They left on Sunday with eighth, ninth, and a small headache over a botched swap. The bigger problem? Pace that went missing just when it mattered.
The flashpoint came late. Charles Leclerc had been asked to let Lewis Hamilton go with fresher tyres to chase down the pack ahead — Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris in the crosshairs. The deal was simple: if Hamilton couldn’t make progress, he’d hand the place back on the final lap.
He didn’t. Or more accurately, he tried and misjudged it.
“Let Charles by, he’s one and a half behind you,” came Riccardo Adami’s call. The order was clear. Hamilton even moved off the racing line, lifted and braked — but he still breasted the line ahead by a fraction.
Team boss Fred Vasseur wasn’t reaching for the conspiracy board. “We asked to swap back and it looks like Lewis had a misjudgment on the position of the start and finish line,” he said, calling it what it was: a miscue, not malice. The logic behind the original call was straightforward too. “Lewis had a tyre advantage and we asked Charles to let him go to try to overtake Lawson and Tsunoda or Norris. On the top, Charles had the issue with the recovery and we are not at the top on the engine and that, I think, was the best option for us to do this move.”
Hamilton held his hands up afterward. “I got the message really late on, and I was zoned in on the car in front of me, even though there was 0.001 chance of passing,” he admitted. “I did lift on the straight and did actually brake, but I missed it by like four tenths, so that was just a misjudgment for myself. So I apologise to Charles.” He added, with a shrug you could hear over the radio: “At the end of the day, it’s 8th and 9th, so…”
Leclerc, who’d played ball when the call first came, noted the “rules were not respected” — and then promptly waved the topic away. “I really don’t care for an eighth place at the end,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have been very slow all weekend, and that’s where we should focus.”
It’s hard to argue. The story of Ferrari’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix wasn’t written on the last lap; it started a day earlier. Hamilton was knocked out in Q2 by four-tenths, a stinging reminder that Baku’s stop-start streets reward traction and top-end the SF-25 didn’t seem to have on tap. Leclerc’s qualifying ended with a mistake at Turn 15 and a bruised front wing. From there, Ferrari were on the back foot.
On Sunday, the red cars collected a double score but not much else: Hamilton P8, Leclerc P9, a finishing order the pit wall didn’t intend but hardly the difference between success and failure. The speed wasn’t there, the energy recovery on Leclerc’s car wasn’t behaving, and the gamble to unleash Hamilton for a late push didn’t flip the script.
For the record, Ferrari slipped to third in the Constructors’ standings, four points behind Mercedes, an unflattering coda to a weekend that began with so much promise. That’s the part that will sting at Maranello more than a clumsy swap.
Still, there’s a human element in here worth clocking. This is a new dynamic, a seven-time world champion bedding into Ferrari alongside a driver who’s been the project’s heartbeat. Team orders are never elegant the first time out, and Baku’s finish line — awkwardly placed just after a flat-out run — isn’t the friendliest classroom for last‑lap choreography. If you’re searching for political tremors, you’re unlikely to find them in Hamilton lifting and braking and missing by four tenths.
What matters is getting the SF-25 back into its Friday window on a Sunday. The raw pace glimpsed early in the weekend didn’t translate when the circuit gripped up and the field turned the wick. And while Leclerc’s “rules not respected” line will do the rounds, his follow-up was the thesis: eighth or ninth doesn’t change the mood music. Ferrari needs to understand why a car that looked tidy over one lap — until the mistake — wasn’t a weapon over a stint.
The team’s next job is to make sure the only swaps they’re managing are of medium to hard, not eighth to ninth. Because when the fights are for fourth, third, or better, misjudging a finish line won’t be a footnote. It’ll be the headline.
