Lewis Hamilton makes feelings clear as Ferrari snub Leclerc sacrifice tactic

Ferrari had the option to use Lewis Hamilton to help Charles Leclerc with a slipstream boost in his pursuit of pole position, but chose not to.

Hamilton was not in the conversation for pole due to a five-place grid drop for a Dutch GP yellow flag infringement. Yet, Ferrari did not opt to use Hamilton to give Leclerc a Q3 tow, and it is an idea which Hamilton would have been against.

Lewis Hamilton glad not to be Charles Leclerc tow sacrifice

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Leclerc went into qualifying at Monza as a genuine contender to bag pole position for himself and Ferrari in front of the tifosi. In the end, he was forced to settle for fourth on the grid.

Since Hamilton was taking a grid penalty, some believed Ferrari would use the seven-time World Champion in Q3 to provide Leclerc with a tow. That boost of straight-line speed down the main straight can make a critical difference in a lap of Monza.

But, Ferrari did not explore that option, and Hamilton would not have supported it.

“Do I feel like they should have? I don’t,” Hamilton made clear to PlanetF1.com and other media outlets.

“It’s not something I ever did in any of my other teams, potentially end up sacrificing one of the drivers.

“And I’ve already got a five-place penalty, so point-wise, I needed to be as high as I could.”

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Hamilton ended Q3 just over a tenth down on Leclerc, the Italian GP shaping up as a further positive step after Zandvoort.

“I’m happy with the progress through the weekend,” Hamilton declared. “I think the progress from last weekend, and then carried that through this week, and so I’ve been relatively happy with the car, the progress.

“I mean, [F]P1, the car felt great. I think that’s where it felt probably the best. Then we went into P2, we made changes into qualifying, and I think it was the most we could get from it.”

Asked if this weekend – Ferrari’s home race – has made him appreciate what he is actually fighting for after earlier setbacks as a Ferrari driver, Hamilton replied: “Yeah, I would say so.

“I would say these last couple of races have been.

“If I could take you through all the nuances and the things that have led up to the races before and what and why they were the way they were… But in actual fact, look at these two races, let all that stuff go and just focus on delivering the job, coming here positive, absorbing the positivity from the fans, and also the team have been incredible.

“We’re not where we want to be. We don’t have the pace that we want actually, and that is what it is. But, fourth and fifth today, it’s good to be close. That’s definitely progress, and I know I’ve got to progress from there, so I want to keep on working at it with my engineers to extract more.”

With his grid penalty, Hamilton drops to 10th on Sunday’s grid.

Very little separated the 20 drivers across qualifying, with seven-tenths covering all 10 Q3 combatants.

Hamilton therefore knows overtaking will be tough, but he believes Ferrari has a secret weapon up its sleeve to help.

“Well, obviously, with the penalty and everyone being so close, it’s going to be, naturally, tough to overtake everybody ahead of me,” said Hamilton.

“But we’ve got good top-line speed, so I’m really hoping that I can try to make up some ground. Need to do that. Probably a good start, a good first lap, good strategy.

“We will go away now and try and figure out what we can do to try to leapfrog the guys up ahead of me, if possible.”

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