Was Ferrari chairman unfair to Hamilton & Leclerc? - F1 Q&A
- indiasportsgroup
- Nov 18, 2025
- 4 min read
The 2025 Formula 1 season is heading for a hectic climax with three races on successive weekends to decide the winner of the drivers' championship.
Lando Norris has a commanding 24-point lead over McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri heading into the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which takes place under the lights on the Strip at 04:00 GMT on Sunday.
That is followed by grands prix in Qatar, from 28-30 November, and then Abu Dhabi, from 5-7 December.
Well known reporter answers your questions
Are Ferrari chair John Elkann's comments that Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc need to concentrate "on driving and talk less" after their poor results this season unfair? - Jordan
John Elkann certainly caused a stir with his remarks the day after the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
It's not clear what exactly provoked them, as Ferrari did not say.
But given they came less than 24 hours after Hamilton had said that his run of results in his first season at Ferrari were "a nightmare, and I have been living it for a while", it would not be unreasonable to suppose the seven-time champion might have been in Elkann's mind.
As far as Hamilton goes, this is typical of the sort of emotional remark he makes when he has had a disappointing race.
Remember when he said after Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying that he was "just useless" and "drove terribly" and Ferrari "probably need to change driver"?
He didn't mean that then, not really. And Brazil should be seen in that context.
After all, Hamilton went on to say: "I believe there is something extraordinary up ahead in my life and in my destiny. I truly still believe in this team and what we can achieve together."
Which is, one might think, exactly the sort of message Elkann would want to hear.
The issue many people had with Elkann's comments was that their accuracy was questionable.
He singled out the mechanics for praise for "basically winning the championship with their performance and everything that has been done on the pit stops", on the basis they are leading the rankings for average pit-stop time., external
Fair enough, but then he said: "If we look at our engineers, there's no doubt that the car has improved."
Well, perhaps it has. But not relative to the opposition. Ferrari were 0.372 seconds off the pace on average in qualifying in the first half of the season, and so far in the second they are 0.472secs off.
As for the drivers, yes, Hamilton has been through the mill this year, but his performances have improved over the season, even if Brazil was a difficult race for him.
But Leclerc has been outstanding. And while he has pointed out regularly that the car is not quick enough, no-one would disagree with that, not even Elkann.
Ferrari are in F1 to win. Nothing less is good enough. That's just a fact. And Leclerc has been steadfastly loyal to the team.
Ferrari are briefing that Elkann's remarks should be seen as a spur for the team to do better. But it's hard to see how Leclerc and Hamilton would take especially kindly to them, however well meaning they were.
The grid seems to be as close in performance as I have ever seen. Has F1 succeeded in creating a situation where each driver's performance over a weekend is a bigger differentiator than in the past, and does the upcoming regulation change threaten this balance? - Matt
It stands to reason that if the cars are closer in performance, then the driver would make more of a difference.
Whether that is more a factor now than at any other time is a difficult question to answer because there are a lot of aspects of F1 now that work in some ways to reduce the difference between drivers.
Telemetry, for example, allows drivers who are not as naturally able to find the limit a chance to catch up over a weekend.
You could see this, for example, at Alpine when Fernando Alonso partnered Esteban Ocon.
At the start of a weekend, Alonso would typically be considerably quicker than Ocon, who would inch closer with each session until he was competitive in qualifying and sometimes able to beat him.
Something else to factor in is that many would argue that the depth of talent at the top of F1 right now is as good as it has ever been, if not better.
In Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Alonso, there are three drivers who would be on anyone's list of all-time greats.
In addition, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Leclerc are all exceptional, without question.
That's at least seven world-class drivers in F1 at the same time.
Any major regulation change inevitably increases both the gaps between teams, and the risk that one team will steal a march on the rest of the field, as happened in 2022 with Red Bull and 2014 with Mercedes.
It would be no surprise if this happened again in 2026. At the same time, there are a lot of very high calibre teams in F1 now, so it should not take too long for the grid to close up again.
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