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Lewis Hamilton to apologise to Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc after Azerbaijan Grand Prix car swap mix-up, finishing ahead despite team agreement.
Lewis Hamilton finished eighth at the Azerbaijan GP (Picture credit: AP)
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has said that he would apologise to Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc over a car swap fiasco during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday, September 21, in which the former finished a spot ahead of Leclerc, which wasn’t on Ferrari’s plans.
In a lacklustre weekend for Ferrari, Leclerc let Hamilton move into eighth with seven laps to go, banking on the latter’s fresher tyres to hunt down the cars ahead.
The move was agreed on the condition that Hamilton would return the place if he couldn’t make progress, but he couldn’t ease up before the chequered flag and ended up finishing ahead of Leclerc.
“Firstly…obviously I was quicker [in that moment of the race] but Charles was gracious to let me by. At the end, I got the message really late on and I was like zoned in on the car in front of me. Even though there was like 0.0001% chance of passing, I was still hopeful, maybe,” Hamilton was quoted as saying by Sky Sports.
“And basically I did lift off the straight and did actually brake, but he missed it by like four tenths. That was just a misjudgment by me. I’ll apologise to Charles. At the end of the day, that’s [only] eighth and ninth,” Hamilton said.
Leclerc downplayed the incident, noting the minimal difference between eighth and ninth, but did raise doubts over whether Hamilton had ‘respected’ the team’s agreement.
“Honestly, for a P8 or a P9, it is not going to be a big talking point. I don’t really mind. Obviously, these are things we agree on between us and the general rules of how we want to work whenever there is a swap,” Leclerc said while speaking on Sky Sports F1.
“It did not happen, and that is ok. It isn’t like I would have been a lot happier being P8, so I don’t mind,” Leclerc said.
September 22, 2025, 11:51 IST
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