Lewis Hamilton reveals the ‘smart’ Ferrari strategy ploy versus McLaren

Lewis Hamilton has urged Ferrari to split his and Charles Leclerc’s strategies at the Dutch Grand Prix as the Ferrari teammates fight for the opportunity to beat McLaren to the victory in a two-car attack.

The Ferrari teammates will line up sixth and seventh on the Zandvoort grid, with the Scuderia the only team inside the top ten aside from McLaren to have the drivers next to one another.

Lewis Hamilton: Given that we’re trying to beat McLaren

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

It opens the door for a two-pronged attack.

But rather bullish Hamilton says an attack on McLaren for the race victory, never mind overhauling the other three drivers starting ahead of Ferrari – Max Verstappen, Isack Hadjar and George Russell – could open the door for a shot at the podium.

That’s something Hamilton has yet to achieve in his 14 starts with Ferrari.

This weekend, though, he’s got his sights set on bagging his first top-three result by beating the McLaren teammates to the race victory in Zandvoort.

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“I think it would be smart to split strategies, given that we’re trying to beat McLaren and it’s definitely good when you have the two drivers next to each other,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com, after qualifying.

“I think apart from the McLarens, we are the next team that has two drivers next to each other, so hopefully that can play a role in how we overcut, undercut cars up ahead of us potentially.”

That Ferrari managed to get both cars into the top ten in qualifying looked an unlikely objective after Friday’s opening practice where Leclerc and Hamilton were 14th and 15th, 1.6s off pace-setter Lando Norris.

The Scuderia made gains in the following practice sessions, but even at the start of qualifying it looked as if Hamilton and Leclerc could be in trouble.

That prompted a different approach to Q2 as the teammates went out early for their only run on new soft tyres and shot up into the top ten. With their rivals failing to improve on their second run, the Ferrari duo made it into the pole position shoot-out, where they finished sixth and seventh with Leclerc ahead.

Hamilton was quizzed on whether he had taken the same approach as his teammate given they were separated by 0.05s.

“No, pretty much we started the same,” Hamilton explained. “He went a different way this morning, I just stayed steady and just stayed with where I was. Which was the right decision for me.

“I’ve tried where he went many times through the year and it’s never been positive for me.

‘I’m definitely learning how extract the best from this car and realise that I’m the type that’s always searching for more, like everywhere – it’s a little bit in the tyre pressure, a little bit in the blanket temperatures, a little bit in ride height, front, rear. I’m looking at everything.

“I think what’s clear, the difference from where I was before, here you can’t be looking for those. You have to kind of stay put most often. I think that’s also the case with this general generation of cars.”

Hamilton will line up on the grid sixth in the Drivers’ standings with 109 points, 42 behind Leclerc. Ferrari is second in the teams’ standings on 260 points, 24 clear of Mercedes.

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