Charles Leclerc seemed put out during today’s sprint race qualifying session when Ferrari instructed him to let him team mate past.
“Swap the cars now?” Leclerc reacted in surprise after receiving the order to let Lewis Hamilton by from race engineer Bryan Bozzi.
“I’ll do it, but we’ve never done that,” he replied, adding, “and I’m a bit in the shit as well.”
However Ferrari appear to have given Leclerc the instruction during SQ2 not because of some new policy on how they co-ordinate their drivers, but in response to an unusual sequence of events.
Hamilton left the pits to start his SQ2 run with Leclerc behind him. The pair circulated in that order and began their first attempts to set a time.
Leclerc then made a mistake at turn six and aborted his attempt to set a time. Had he completed that lap he would have used the next lap to cool his tyres back down. Instead he asked race engineer Bryan Bozzi if he could cool his tyres on the current lap and then begin another attempt at a push lap:
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Hamilton pressed on and completed his lap, though the eventual pole-winner did not set a particularly competitive time. He then began his cool-down lap. The two Ferrari drivers were now out of phase.
Hamilton reported he was having difficulty cooling his tyres down. Ferrari told him not to pit, so he prepared to continue onto a second consecutive cool-down lap. Meanwhile Leclerc, now pushing, was catching him:
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Hamilton pulled over to let Leclerc by as they came out of the final corner. Leclerc passed him as they approached the line and backed off. With Hamilton starting his second cool-down lap, they were back in phase, but now Leclerc was running close in front of Hamilton.
As Hamilton pointed out, this created a problem for him. Running ahead can confer an advantage on a driver and teams usually rotate this privilege between drivers. Ferrari asked Hamilton if he wanted to run ahead, and he asked to:
Leclerc was therefore surprised to get an instruction to swap places. As he was still struggling with his tyre temperatures, it added to his problems, though both drivers successfully proceeded to SQ3:
Leclerc, however, is now under investigation for potentially driving too slowly during SQ2 and it remains to be seen whether Ferrari’s instruction contributed to that.
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2025 Chinese Grand Prix
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