Lewis Hamilton looked enviously at his former employer Mercedes during the Dutch GP. While Ferrari did not respond to his call for a team order – so he could more easily pass a slower Charles Leclerc – George Russell immediately let teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli pass as soon as Mercedes asked. “I lost so much time behind Charles,” Hamilton sighed.
Read more Racespecial GP Netherlands (45 pages): Anticlimax in Zandvoort
Lewis Hamilton had just overtaken Oscar Piastri for fifth place in lap 35 of the Dutch GP when he ended up behind a slower Charles Leclerc. The seven-time world champion hoped Ferrari would implement team orders, but that did not happen. “Great way to waste time, guys, really well done,” Hamilton then sarcastically said over the radio. When Leclerc was called in for a pit stop on lap 43, the Brit only then took fourth place.
Meanwhile, the Mercedes drivers immediately followed the team orders. Kimi Antonelli passed George Russell without any problems. “I want to win,” Hamilton sighed afterwards to F1TV. “I’m here to win and it’s difficult when you look ahead and see the two Mercedes drivers: they get the team order and then it’s settled – they carry it out immediately.”
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‘Lost valuable time behind Charles’
Hamilton is therefore definitely planning to raise the issue internally at Ferrari. However, the seven-time world champion does not think it cost him a podium place. “I don’t know if we would have made it anyway, because the Mercedes is just so fast. You saw the McLaren purely flying past on power. We lose about four tenths per lap here, just on the straights,” Hamilton reveals. “So that was a challenge, but I do think I lost time when I was behind Charles, which meant I ultimately had a bigger gap to close to overtake George at the end.”
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