Lewis Hamilton Vents Ferrari Frustration and Compares Team Radio Response to Mercedes After Dutch Grand Prix

• Lewis Hamilton finished fourth at the Dutch Grand Prix after losing time stuck behind teammate Charles Leclerc on quicker tyres
• His frustrated team radio messages included a sarcastic “great waste of time there, guys” once Leclerc finally pitted
• Hamilton compared Ferrari’s hesitation to swap the drivers with Mercedes’ quick call to move George Russell aside for Kimi Antonelli

Lewis Hamilton says he will take his frustration with Ferrari’s in-race management “offline” after losing several seconds stuck behind teammate Charles Leclerc in the Dutch Grand Prix, a delay he believes cost him a shot at the podium.

The seven-time world champion finished fourth at Zandvoort, just short of catching Mercedes’ George Russell for third, and drew a pointed comparison between Ferrari’s reluctance to swap its drivers and the speed with which Mercedes moved Russell aside for championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

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Stuck Behind His Own Teammate

Hamilton had pitted later than Leclerc and caught the sister Ferrari on fresher tyres by lap 43 of the 72-lap race. He radioed the team to make his pace advantage clear: “I’m quicker than Charles. These tyres are better.”

Ferrari opted against reversing the order of the cars. An increasingly terse Hamilton came back on the radio: “We are just losing time!” When Leclerc finally pitted a lap later, freeing Hamilton to run at full pace, the Briton delivered his verdict with a sarcastic edge: “A great way of wasting time guys, good job.”

He voiced further frustration later in the race when asking whether he would be pitting under a Virtual Safety Car phase, asking the team, “Are you using me as a guinea pig?” before he was called in.

The Mercedes Comparison

Hamilton went on to finish fourth, chasing Russell for the final podium spot until the chequered flag. Russell had been ordered by Mercedes to let Antonelli back past in the closing stages after the Italian emerged from a late pit stop on faster tyres, a swap Hamilton contrasted with his own situation.

Asked about his blunt radio messages after the race, Hamilton told F1: “I want to win. I want to win. I’m here to win. It is difficult when you are looking ahead and you see the two Mercedes drivers, they get the call and it’s done, and they execute straight away. They let Kimi by and let him get on with the race. I was on a different strategy and it’s not the same here. That’s a little bit difficult but we’ll take it offline and when I go back now, I’ll speak to them about it.”

Praise for the Car All the Same

Hamilton, who started fifth, credited Ferrari’s latest round of upgrades for the SF-26 and the team’s execution on pit stops and strategy, even as he pushed back on the in-race decision-making.

“Firstly, the guys in the garage did a fantastic job. Pit stops, strategy was generally very, very good. The car felt awesome and they have continued to work so hard,” he told Sky Sports F1. “We brought a bit of an upgrade here. We are just chipping away at it all the time. This first half of the season we have been losing three to five tenths on the straight depending on which track we go to and that’s a hard deficit to overcome just through the corners. But we are close.”

He added: “But today was definitely frustrating for me. I’m here to win and I really believe that this team can win. We couldn’t win this race but to win championships you have to pick up every point and the last few races have been difficult with penalties and stuff and then, today, I lost several seconds behind Charles which I think ultimately would have made the difference at the end. But we will take it offline. My goal is to try and lead this team to the championship and we’ve got some work to do for sure.”

Where the Championship Stands

Finishing behind Antonelli for the second successive day, Hamilton left Zandvoort 59 points off the Mercedes driver in the championship. Speaking to formula1.com, he was more upbeat about Ferrari’s overall trajectory, pointing to the gains still needed to match Mercedes on the straights.

“I tell you, it’s so close at the top, really, really hard battling,” he said. “But I moved forwards, I think our qualifying needed to be a bit better, but Mercedes are gaining like four tenths a second just on the straight, so that’s really hard to capture everywhere else. It just shows we’ve got a really good car. If we can somehow improve our power unit and get a bit closer to them, which I trust in the team that they’re working as hard as they can to do so. Hopefully we can be even closer and even more in the mix between those guys.”

A Podium Ferrari Never Got Close To

The frustration was sharpened by how close the podium fight actually was. Mercedes’ Toto Wolff later revealed that Russell had raised his own concern on the radio about the team risking a “lost double podium” by inverting his cars, given how quickly the Ferraris were closing in behind. In the end, neither Hamilton nor Leclerc found a way past Russell, and Wolff pointed out that Mercedes had come out ahead of Ferrari regardless of the order behind Norris and Antonelli.

“We finished with a P2 and P3,” Wolff said. “We outscored Ferrari in points, so that is okay.” For Hamilton, the margins were exactly the point: the seconds lost behind Leclerc were the difference between a hard-fought fourth and a shot at breaking up the Mercedes lockout of the podium.

Leclerc crossed the line fifth, behind his teammate, leaving Ferrari without a podium finisher at Zandvoort for the second race running. In the drivers’ standings, Leclerc sits fifth on 155 points, 87 behind Antonelli, while Hamilton’s fourth-place finish kept him level with Russell on 183 points, both 59 adrift of the championship lead.

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• George Russell Says Kimi Antonelli ‘Deserved’ to Finish Ahead of Him After Mercedes Team Orders at the Dutch Grand Prix
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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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